


Zootopia: The Apex Circle: Act 1

by Radical_Rapscalian



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Drama, F/F, Family Feels, High School, Mild Smut, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Original Character Death(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-12 10:32:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13545516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radical_Rapscalian/pseuds/Radical_Rapscalian
Summary: Ever since the Nightshade war Zootopia has recovered and has grown stronger than ever. The Unity Project was meant to bring mammals closer together in a bigger way than just friendship and politics. It was meant to bring children into the world that could never be born in the natural way, not just to bring on a new generation, but to bring families closer together. Nick and Judy Wilde participated in such a program. However much of Zootopia disagreed, shutting down the Unity Project and hunting children born from such a program. Jack Wilde is one of those Children.Being the Son of two of the best cops in Zootopia did not do much for Jack, all his life he has been ridiculed and tortured for who he is and what he stands for, always standing in the shadow of greatness that follow his mother and father bring with them every day. But now a secret society begins to reveal themselves around zootopia, threatening not only children of the Unity Project but all the mammals of Zootopia. With the world against him and the ZPD unable to help, it is up to Jack and his friends to find out who these people are and answer the many questions about who he is and why he's so important in their plans.





	1. Prologue: A Controversy in the Making

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dusted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11293314) by [DrekkDeina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrekkDeina/pseuds/DrekkDeina). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Prologue to a long running series that I plan to work on for a long time!!!!!! This piece is inspired by another story created by DrekkDeina (Kinda a sequel to the story), so all credit for my inspiration will go to him (The link will be right under the notes)!!!!!!! This story will introduce all new characters as well as some recurring ones, this story will focus on not only the personal struggles of each of the characters but also look into the history of zootopia and how everything in it is connected!!!!! This will be my first piece of fan fiction so go easy on me guys!!!!! Please leave a comment down below, I would appreciate it greatly if you guys give me constructive criticism on my work so I can better my writing for you reading pleasure!!!!!! Enjoy Zootopia fans!!!!!!!

The cold February wind encompassed Henry; his dark trench coat billowing in the strong gusts that accompanied the night sky, the cold piercing through his fur and shirt, and the stars sparkling over the canal waters. Henry sighed heavily, for this very night had reminded him of the night that he proposed to his wife, it was a shame that the occasion for this meeting was not going to be as joyful as that one was. He looked down at his watch in anticipation. “I can't stand to wait any longer, time is of the essence....”, the air around Henry became colder, the fur on his neck began to stand on end.

“I see that you finally decided to show up.... I was going to leave if you didn't...” Henry turned around to see a figure he knew all too well, however the darkness that clouded him made it difficult to tell whether or not he was wearing that ridiculous armor.

“You know full well that you can never leave Henry, not until you pass from this world...”, the figure said in a metallic voice. Henry took a deep breath, “And even then I can't decide my own death.... what do you want?” The figure stepped forward, with it being the middle of the night the moonlight did little to help shed light on the figure's appearance. “He has deemed Project Unity a success, it is to be terminated within 1 month's time” Henry clenched his fangs with enough force to make sound similar to grinding gravel, “TERMINATED?! We spent 25 years and billions of dollars on that project and you just want to shut it down? We've barely scratched the surface on we could do for people! With the discovery of the M-gene we could cure cancer, alzheimers, nearly every form of genetic disease on the planet! He is the biggest fool on the planet if he thinks that he can just....”

A dark metal paw collapsed around Henry's throat; strong and cold it squeezed like a constrictor, making sure that the point was taken and that it would not hesitate to kill. The figure lifted Henry off the ground just enough to have his hind paws be unable to touch the ground, “Watch your tongue Dr. you may find him not as forgiving as I and you will do as he commands, now did you have the meeting?”

Henry struggled to find his voice, the lack of air did not help his situation, “Yes... the Wilde family has agreed to become a part of the project, they are scheduled for the surgery within the next three weeks... however there is a problem...”, the paw gripped tighter, “What....problem...?”, the figure asked in a harsh voice.

“The mantle will not be their first child... they have another, an adopted child who I believe to be the daughter of Umbra...” The metal paw released Henry from its grip of death. Henry gasped and coughed in relief, gripping his neck intently, running the pads of his paw around the front of his neck to check if there was any serious damage to his trachea. Henry looked up from his crouched state to see a set of pale amber eyes stare at him through what he believed to be a mask. “How do you know that this kit is her child?” Henry struggled to compose himself; he stood up on wobbly knees, still recovering from the assault on his throat, “Yes, I have gone through extensive medical records dating back over 30 years, the child that was present at the meeting was indeed the of Chester and Alice Underlan, or as you may know her as Umbra. The body found at her base of operations was not Umbra herself, merely the incinerated body of a lioness that was under her command”

A long and uncomfortable silence followed between the two mammals; one stood in silence, with either rage or interest burning in his pale amber eyes. Another stood still in fear and anticipation, waiting to see what the other would do. The amber eyes panned towards Henry with their shape unchanged, “This is of no concern to us, it will merely be another obstacle in need of... removal. The creation of the Mantle is our true goal” Henry held strong, for any sign of weakness could result in his death, “It will take time for the Mantle to reach perfection, and with recent events and extremely strong opposition there may be some... unforeseen complications with the procedure and development of the mantle such as physical or mental trauma due his familial and genetic nature” “You speak of the mantle as a male, why is that?” Henry stiffened, unsure whether or not the question was out of concern, interest, or rage, “Well the family did request that the child be a boy including the adoptive daughter”

The figure began the chuckle softly. Henry froze in fear, never in his life has he ever heard him laugh in any way. Henry did not know much about him despite the many years they've known each other, and the thought of him laughing terrified Henry to no end. For whatever went on in the mind of that monster, was to be left locked away behind that mask. “Aaahhh my dear Dr. Talons, time and time again you continue to surprise us” Henry raised his eyebrow, unsure of what he meant, “I don't believe that I am following you...” “All the pieces will come together eventually... but for now my dear doctor... it is time to disappear...”

_**11 months later........** _

“OW!!!! JUDY WILL YOU CALM THE HELL DOWN!!!!!??????”, Nick exclaimed behind an excruciating amount of pain from the kick that his wife gave him in the nether regions.

“NICK I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER FUCKING WORD!!!!!! I FEEL LIKE ELLEN FUCKING TIGSLEY FROM THE FUCKING ALIEN MOVIES!!!!!!!”, his wife responded in a very harsh tone, furiously thumping her foot on the floor of the van.

“Remember what the doctor said? Not to put too much stress on yourself.....”

“I HAVE ENOUGH FUCKING STRESS AS IT IS WITH THIS KID KICKING ME FROM THE INSIDE OUT!!!!!!!”

“WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP I'M TRYIN' TO DRIVE HERE, AND IT DOESN'T HELP WITH YOU TWO SAVAGES YELLING AT EACH OTHER IN THE BACK!!!!!”, Finnick yelled from the front seat.

Exactly 20 minutes age, Judy, Nick, and Finnick were enjoying a night out to celebrate the baby's delivery that was supposed to come next week, leaving Penny home with a babysitter.... However that celebration was short lived after about 10 minutes into the evening when the baby decided that time was up. “Which turn to the hospital?”, Finnick asked with an immediate sense of urgency.

“Next left after this set of lights! Fluff calm down... just breath, breeeaaaaathhhh....” Judy continued a set of extremely fast and heavy breathing that would have sent any other mammal into shock. With her belly swollen to the size of a beach ball it was understandable the amount of stress that would be going on inside her body. Nick knew that Judy could be very violent but the temper that she had on right now could scare away Freddy Cougar.

“ALRIGHT HERE IT IS! NOW GET YOUR CRAZY WIFE OUTTA MY VAN!!!!” “Alright, Judy take my hand everything's gonna be alri..... RRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH!!!!”, Nick's sentence was interrupted with his wife's paw crushing his with the force of over 13 elephants sitting on him at once. “Niiiiiiiccccckkkkkk....... it's coming.......” “SWEET CHEESE AND CRACKERS!!!!”, He sprints over to the wheelchairs posted out front and immediately grabbed his mate and rushed her into the hospital.

“WE NEED A DOCTOR!!!!”

_**10 hours of intense pain and suffering later.....** _

Nick sat outside the delivery room impatiently, his tail swishing back and forth and his foot thumping furiously against the ground. “C'mon Nicky don't be scared.... you've been through much worse... faced savage animals, psycho sheep, robot snow leopards, and terrorists.... you can get through this....”. His mantra was not helping, for as much as he wanted to repress his body clearly was not agreeing with him. Sweat glistened against his orange fur and his eyes were blood shot from the lack of sleep. Finnick was sitting next to him reading the Paw Street Journal, occasionally looking up at his buddy to see how he was doing. Both of them have been quiet in respect to their personal space, with Finnick caring little about the situation and Nick having a constant panic attack.

The squeak of a large metal door broke both mammals out of their respective trances. A ferret doctor walked out of the room and turned to face Nick. “Mr. Wilde, it's done.” Nick couldn't have stood faster, staring at the doctor with extreme intensity, “Is she okay? Is my wife okay? Is anything wrong?”, he asked with a blatant sense of uncertainty. Finnick sitting next him gave the doctor a similar but far less anxious look.

“She's right as rain Mr. Wilde, now we have her stable but I do suggest not to rush in there, she's in a very fragile state”. Nick breathed a heavy sigh of relief, “Yes, I understand” Nick looked to Finnick with uncertain eyes, “Whattaya lookin' at me for? She ain't my wife! Especially after she wrecked the back of the van!” Nick could only give a slight grin of appreciation to his friend. And with that he entered into the delivery room, he saw around three doctors, a gazelle, a bear, and a beaver standing together on one side of the room most likely discussing his wife's condition.

When he looked to his left he saw Judy lying down peacefully with something in her arms, looking at it longingly and motherly stare that he hadn't seen since he was a kit. Her demeanor completely different from the time when she was in labor, her smile gave off a feeling he felt when he first proposed to her years ago. Judy caught onto Nick and signaled him to come over. Nick put on his signature grin and half-lidded stare and walked over to see his wife.

“Hey Fluff, glad to see you're not as violent as you were in the van”, Nick said with some reserve, fearing another death blow from his wife. Judy turned to face him, Nick's fear was immediately alleviated with her smile. “Nick.... it's a boy”, his wife said with glassy eyes and a massive smile. Nick looked down at the kit in her arms and if he was ice he would have melted on the spot.

The sleeping kit lay there in her arms with his fur being mostly a slightly darker gray than his mother's, and his ears although like a fox's were slightly rounded at the top, the funny part being that the kit was about a fifth of Judy's height. “You wanna hold him?”, the doe asked softly. If Nick's head was not attached to his neck it would have swiveled off his spine and on the floor. “Are you sure? I mean this is pretty huge, I mean it's not like I'm holding a vase or something like that or a book I mean this is a living being that belongs to me and I'm not sure if.....”, his sentence was cut short with his wife handing him their child lightly. Nick about to say something in protest until he was distracted by a small whine that came from the kit in his arms.

When he looked down he noticed the eyes of the kit slowly being to open his eyes, revealing a teal coloring that was like staring into a nebula. The kit smiled at his father with a toothless grin and seemingly mouthing at nothing. Visible tears were being brought up from Nick's eyes, he sniffled and smiling a watery grin at the toothless kit. Nick immediately felt something boiling up in him, a warm feeling that he never felt before. Seeing the small kit in his arms filled him with a sense of joy, Nick's tail instinctively curved its way around his body and onto the little kit, an unconscious action that Nick wasn't prepared for. Was this the feeling of being a true father?

“Are those tears I see in the big bad fox?”, Nick turned to look at his wife, seeing that a wide grin seemed to stretch from one corner of her head to another. “No.... it's just.... I...... Oh god why is he so adorable, how can something this small be so adorable, this should be illegal.... he must get it from your side of the family.....”, Nick said behind watery eyes and a choking voice. His wife signaled her husband for the kit to be returned, he handed the smiling kit to his wife.

As soon as the kit reentered his mother's arms the kit immediately fell back into his slumber, an action that was curious to his mother and hilarious to his father. “I think he's preparing himself for dinner and school conversations”, Nick said with his default grin and half-lidded watery eyes. “He must get that from you..... So, what it'll be?” “What'll whatta who now?” “His name you dumb fox, what do you think it should be?”, his wife said behind a series of small giggles

“I was thinking.... Henry, no Steven, no.... OH BOGO!”, the very mention of that name sending shivers down his wife's spine.

“As much as I respect the Chief, I don't know how I feel about giving our son that name. It might scare off some of the other kids” “Alright, Alright, just make sure no one at the bullpen finds out you said that”, Nick said with a wide grin and cocked eyebrow, only receiving a large eye roll from Judy. “How about......... Jack?” The name somehow resonated with Nick to a weirdly personal degree for some reason. “Yeah, Jack, Jack Wilde it is”

For the first time in years, Nick and Judy felt something truly special.... pride.

 


	2. Chapter 1: Another Day, Another Mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first official chapter of the Apex circle series guys!!!!!!!!!! This is where the story kicks off!!!! The few few chapters will be a bit slow, because I do want to introduce the characters for there are a ton that need introduction!!!!!! But once again leave a comment telling me how I can improve my writing for your reading pleasure!!!!!!!!

_**17 years later........** _

**BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!!!!!!**

Jack tossed and turned at the sound of his alarm clock, unable to muster the energy to leave the cozy and warm nature of his bed. His forced ignorance of his alarm clock was rudely interrupted by the sound of a slamming door. “Fuck...”, Jack whispered to himself.

“Rise and shine sleepy head gotta get to school on time! Need to hit the books and wash the decks it's bewitching hour!”

“Daaaaaaaaaaaaad..... 5 more minutes....”, the voice groaned from underneath the covers. “No can do kiddo! What kind of dad would I be if I didn't annoy my son first thing in the morning!”, Nick exclaimed as he ripped the covers off of his son, with nothing being on the bed other than Jack in his boxer shorts covering his head with his pillow. “You never did this with Penny..... You always left her alone in the morning......”

“1. That was your mother's job, 2. Your sister's out of college and is 22 AND is a big girl now, unlike you who is still a Junior in High School and only 17, so it is still my responsibility to annoy you every morning until you have to go to college as well. Even then I will still annoy you but for different reasons. Now come on, your mom's making breakfast”, The father fox proceed to grab his son by the tail and yank him off the bed, resulting in him landing on the hard wooden floor with a loud thud. “Ow.....”, the teenage kit announced. “I may help you get out of bed but you are old enough to get yourself dressed. Now come on”

“hmmmmmmm..... fiiiiinnnnneeeee......”, Jack lifted himself up from the cold wooden floor and waddled his way over to the bathroom to get for the day. He examined himself in the mirror before going to the usual routine.

He was the same height as his dad and he mainly took on mostly vulpine features, however his fur was a slightly dark shade of grey, with white fur running down from just under his chin and around his lower cheeks to down to his belly button, outlining his chest and abdomen. His ears were rounded at the top and slightly longer by an inch and a half than his dad's (most likely from his mother's side of the family), with small tufts of white fur on the tips. He was lean and muscular for his age but still retaining a portion of his father's somewhat skinny nature (only adding slightly more to the muscle tone), most likely from the intense excersize he would get from Training Instructor Mchorn and his Mom on weekends. His face had a very similar shape to his father's, with his cheek fur being more rounded like his mom and his snout was 1/5 the length of his dad's, maintaining and more bunny-esque shape but a fox-like nose. His tail was about 6 inches shorter than his father's and his fur was not as fluffy but still held a good amount of “poof” in his tail, and holding an all grey coloration with a small white tip at the end. His legs were a combination of his mom's and dad's, the upper part of his leg was nearly identical to his dad's, his feet were more like his mom's, with having slight indications of fox feet such as the pads on the bottom and his toes being slightly more spread out than a normal rabbit. His paws were more like his fathers, and for some apparent reason he's always had naturally sharper claws than his father, with the ability to retract his claws at will like his mother. His front teeth had the bottom and top fangs of his father with the back rows of teeth being more like his mother's more Lagomorphic molars.

 

“Hey Bloody Mary you gonna keep checking yourself out or are you coming for breakfast?”, his mom yelled from the kitchen.

“Alright I'll be right out! Geeze ya think a guy could take care of himself once in a while....”, he mumbled to himself. “I heard that!”, Judy tentatively yelled from the kitchen. In response Jack merely rolled his so hard you would think they went to the back of his head.

Every morning was the same old thing, Jack would be yanked out of bed by his father, teased at by his mother, then finally going through the gauntlet of misery that was his school. The young kit matted out and combed his fur, brushed his teeth, and washed his face till finally getting into a dark blue Linkin Bark t-shirt and cargo shorts.

Still being half asleep he meandered into the kitchen and accidentally bumped into the cabinet in the main hallway of their apartment, knocking over an old picture frame and just barely catching it before it hit the floor. He looked at the picture and it read “CHIEF BOGO RETIRED! ZOOTOPIA'S OWN BIG BUNNY COP TAKES ON THE MANTLE!”, with the subtext reading, “PARTNER/HUSBAND PROMOTED TO SECOND IN COMMAND!”. He laughed at the the cut-out newspaper article, it showed the 4 of them all in one shot, Judy, Nick, Penny, and him all in one photo, with Penny head-locking his dad and giving Nick a noogie and Jack giving a death hug to his mom while she's holding the award, that was over 4 years ago but that picture sometimes resurfaces on the internet in some weird ways. Their apartment was full of these kinds of pictures, from vacations, to awards, to the tusk of a walrus (long story don't ask why his mom kept that). Their old apartment couldn't fit all this stuff and the semi-large bodies that occupied the space (especially Penny who was 3 times his height) so they had to find a new apartment with a larger space. For once it actually had some form of a living room, rather than a two room apartment that could've been used as a padded cell. Lost in thought Jack completely forgot about his parents' presence.

“Look who finally decided to join the living? By the way you were mumbling in your sleep again, your father and I could here from our room, also be careful of where you walk, you almost knocked over the whole cabinet last time”, his mom blatantly pointed out as Jack meandered in the kitchen. His Mother was in police uniform and polishing her tranq gun while his father, also in police uniform, was grabbing something from the toaster, TV playing in the background with the morning news.

“C'mon, getim while their hot!”, his father yelled in a very over-accentuated southern accent.

Jack huffed at the sight of the dreaded food,“Bug toast again? Haven't we had this for the past 10 days now? My teeth are going to be permenentaly bug crusted by the time I'm 18. By the way what did Mchorn give me for my physical exam? Also he really needs to step it down with those excersizes, seriously when do burpies have anything to do with being a cop? Plus I had to do 80 of those things!”, the kit complained as he forced the toast into his mouth.

“97, and even if you don't join the police academy when you graduate that doesn't mean you can slack off and stay on the couch all day and do nothing. You wanna end up like Uncle Ben?”, she asked in a semi-frustrated and joking manner.

“Yeah, you better be careful or else you'll be eating three boxes of donuts every hour and have to attend physical therapy every day because your weight is too much for your legs to handle”, his father chimed rather annoyingly.

“I go to the gym when I can, I mean I have to keep up with Brian somehow......... Plus isn't Uncle Ben an agent now for that star whatsherface? He doesn't exactly need to worry about working out when he travels in a private jet”, the teen tentatively pointed out.

“Ariana Mawde I think it was, and that is the last thing I want you to get into. Those people are a bad influence, by the time you land a solid agent you'll end up in a tundratown dumpster”, he mom exclaims. The TV report for some reason drowned out the the rest of the conversation in the room, grabbing the attention of the entire Wilde family, “... Police are still unable to find any clear leads on the missing mammals, with most of the victims being predator, and having 2 of those victims being children of the Unity Project. As of right now families are still wondering, where could their family members be, how is it that after 1 month of searching that the police are still unable to find any hard evidence? Questions that will hopefully be answered in the near future, Trisha Clawson signing off 6:00 news”

“I have to admit, there should have been evidence at the crimes scenes and we've still been unable to turn......”, his mom's eyes turn into saucers which left both Jack and his dad staring at each other with worried looks on their faces. “IT'S 6:00!!!!! C'MON YOU TWO GET YOUR JACKETS ON AND FORGET THE TOAST WE'RE GONNA BE LATE!!!!”, Judy leaped from the kitchen table chair into the living room. Jack was always impressed with his mom's ability to move at high speeds when she wanted to, sometimes to the point where she would become a grey blur in other mammals' vision. Reality struck of course when Judy grabbed both Jack and Nick by the ears and dragged them out the front door.

“WAIT MY BACKPACK!!”, Jack released himself from his mother's death grip and quickly ran to his room grabbing his bag and school essentials and running past his furious mom and helpless father. The two officers followed suite, running through hallway after hallway, receiving from unhappy complaints from the neighbors.

The fearsome trio entered the police cruiser stationed outside their building driving just 1 mile over Zootopia's speed limit, with Jack thinking to himself that his mom would be the kind of mammal to pull over someone for doing that but thankfully she was now secured behind a desk for 90% of the time at work.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!! So sweetie anything interesting happening at school today or is it just the usual? MOVE YA SLOTH!!!”, his mother tended to switch tones quite rapidly when in periods of stress, more often than not in the instance that she and Nick are late for work and Jack is late for school.

“Just the usual, Mr. Gibbs is doing more review for the trigonometry test next week and me and Brian are probably going to help Steve finish up his game for his mid-term project”, the kit replying hap-hazardly. His father asked the next question while death-gripping the front seat so he wouldn't go flying forward when Judy stopped, “What about that Go-kart you three were working on, you were hyping that idea up for the past 3 months now?” The kit twitched his right ear at the mention of the “Go-kart”, “Oh yeah that reminds me, me and the guys are going to go to the docks near savannah square, don't worry, we'll be going right after school and I'll be home before 6:30”, the kit's eyes moved towards the window while drumming his paws nervously on his arm, for the “Go-kart” that they were referring to wasn't a go kart at all (but his parents didn't know that).

The next few seconds was taken up by a short stop that would have sent Jack straight through the bars of the cruiser if he didn't have his seat-belt on, but nonetheless still knocked the wind out of him. “Mom..... are you sure you're still eligable to drive?”, Jacked asked in a heaving voice after suffering the impact “Yes and you still aren't, no go on you're gonna be late. LOVE YOU!” Jack hopped out of the cruiser and made his way to the driver's window, kissing his mom on the cheek and giving a high-five to his dad. “Bye guys, love you too!”.

As Jack ran off to the front door of his school, his mother was giving him a worried look as he ran off, her ears were flopped down and her eyebrows curved in a look of sadness, one that Nick caught onto quickly. “Alright Fluff what's on your mind” Judy's head popped up in surprise, “Whatdidwhosaywhatnow?”.

Her husband gave a slight chuckle at his wife's slurred response. “I said out with it, you've always been giving him that stare every time he's started high school, he's not going to war! Sure school can be pressurizing and stressful but it's not going to earn him a trip to the loony bin”.

Before she could think of a made-up response to her husband's remark, Judy eventually gave up knowing that her husband would get it out of her eventually. “Ever since what happened to him in middle school I can't help but worry for him. Every hour that he's there is an hour that we're not there to help him. After what those mammals did to him I can't help but wonder why I can't be at two places at once. He still feels those scars, I've seen how he reacts to certain words and actions, just like you were with the muzzle but not as extreme”, Judy said with glassy eyes. Nick leaned over to Judy and pulled her in for a deep hug, kissing the top of her head lightly.

“I worry for him too Judy. You think you're the only one that's lost sleep worrying about Jack? Me and Penny both worried about him all the time. But Jack's a hell of a lot stronger than us, plus we're not always gonna be around forever to protect him. I mean look at us now! I wake up every morning with back pain even after a full day of sitting down writing reports”, Nick said with a light chuckle. Judy gave a heavy sigh with a smile forming on her face.

“God when did we get so old”

“I think when we got married that's when the grey fur started to show up”, his wife chuckled at her husband's remark, “But you know what.... there's no one in the world I'd rather get old with than you, you dumb bunny”. “Me neither you sly fox”, they looked into each other's eye, emerald meeting amythest, and holding a deep and emotional kiss. A kiss that was interrupted at the sight of the clock.

“WE'RE GONNA BE LATE!”, they said in stereo.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jacked walked into the hallways of his school with tense shoulders. Despite this being his third year at Precinct 1 High School he always feels somewhat when walking in there. The large tile hallways didn't exactly help either; even though he knew they were meant for the larger mammals that attended his school, they still made him feel small and insignificant. He made his way down to his locker which was on the right side of the hallway on the bottom row of seemingly endless lockers in the science building.

He looked to the wall across from him, and chuckled at the schools mural with its goofy dragon mascot with the caption, “Be Strong like Dragons!”. The saying would have worked if not for the fact that school was a metaphorical and literal meat-grinder. How does the saying go, “It brings you up just to bring you down?”, he honestly had no idea. “You look extra chipper today, fall off the bed again or get hit by a semi?”, a somewhat gruff but clear voice asked from behind him. “Hey Brian, good to see you're still on the proverbial snark train”.

Jack's friend Brian Pawsly was a Liger, yes a liger, but the thing was he wasn't a part of the Unity Project. He was born naturally and was never put in a lab before he needed to be born (plus He and jack were the only two half-breeds in the whole school). He was 4 inches taller than the average tiger, with white-ish beige fur and pure black stripes. Brian towered over Jack, with Jack's height just barely reaching his waist, and that's if you count the ears. Brian was probably one of the strongest kids in school, and having muscle mass almost equal to Hulk Howlgan. Which helped him out a lot because he was also the star running back for the school's footbal team, winning last year's championship against Tundratown's Yetis. What Jack always found kind of funny was the fact that being the pinnacle of male dominance that any female would drool over, the reality was that Brian was gay. He was actually dating a lion named Roger from Savanna Central that he always visited on weekends. Brian was wearing the school signature red and gold football t-shirts saying, “2039 football champions!” and baggy jeans.

“You know I'm serious, went through another one of your mom's 'working' weekends?”, Brian asked with air quotes on working.

“OH MY F'ING GOD YES!!!! Seriously I feel like Mchorn has it out for me, I must have kicked him in the balls in a past life or something. But on the bright side I improved my running time for the 500 meter, 29 seconds. Plus I apparently beat my mom's record on the obstacle courses, but I wasn't really paying attention”

“Sounds like you're just complaining to complain, you've been working like a savage these past few months man, I can see a bunch more muscle on you than 6 months ago. Plus you're not as skinny as you were before”, Brian said with a flirtatious but joking tone.

“Hey I have to keep up with you in some degree. And I don't know how Roger'll feel about you giving me that look, remember what happened when that waitress at Snarlbucks tried to cop a feel on you?”, Jack asked with a raised eyebrow and a cocky grin.

“Don't remind me..... he was lucky that all three of us were there to keep him from eating her”, Brian said as he rolled his eyes.

Both of them fell to silence to the sound of clopping that could be heard just barely over the sound of the rumbling chorus that was P.1 High. “Fi Fy Fo Fum, I smell the blood of a gazelle walking by”, Jack said while mimicking a hulking giant to the best of his ability while looking absolutely ridiculous.

“1. That stopped being funny during the end of first quarter, 2. You look like you're having a stroke while hanging off a ledge”, the gazelle said in annoyance. Steve Bushbuck was Jack's other friend, officially dubbed the “nerdy runt” of the group which Steve held in great pride. He was about a a foot and a half shorter than Brian and was only taller than Jack by about foot. His antlers were about a half a foot shorter than an average gazelle but Steve continuously insists he is a “late bloomer”. He recently started dying the top of his hair red just in between his horns as well which both Jack and Brian found to look ridiculous. He was skinny even for a Gazelle, having to where extremely thick-rimmed green glasses due his terrible eye-sight. Today he was wearing a bland white long sleeve shirt with the Fur Wars logo on the back and his usual purple slacks (He's never been one for a fashion sense). He's recently started trying to grow a Fu-man-chu stache but all it does is make him look 3 years older than he actually is.

“Honestly when are you going to start acting more mature? To be perfectly honest, I still don't quite understand why we nominated you our unofficial “leader” of this group if you act like that”, Steve asked while pushing his glasses back on his nose.

“Because I'm always the one willing to take the risks and I know how to make good split-second decisions. Remember, I'm the reason we weren't sent to detention after that stupid concoction you made in chemistry last. Seriously who thinks mixing Hydrogen Peroxide and Vinegar is a good idea?”, Jack asked while rummaging through his locker.

“I will have you know, I was going to use that mixture for the Science Team competition, you know the one where we would test the reactions of metals under corrosive materials?”

“Okay there Bill Nile, next time one of us gets in trouble try to science your way out of a conversation and see how that works. Plus what would you do without my glowing personality?”, Jack stated as he puffed out his chest and put a paw on his heart with a coy grin.

“Oop, Code White on your 7 o'clock”, Brian stated. Jack swiveled around fast enough that he almost spun over. Foot furiously thumping on the ground at the rate of a jackhammer, a bad habit he got from his mother's side.

As he looked to the back of him he saw the love of his life, well.... more accurately, the biggest CRUSH of his life. Cynthia Howler, a name that stayed in Jack's most pleasant thoughts. She was an arctic fox, fur white as the freshest snow and bright beautiful lapiz-blue eyes, she was Jack's height, with a body that imprinted into his dreams. Her ears were shorter than his by an inch and a half and had an almost perfect roundness at the tip, she was in great shape, with a tone but soft nature to her entire body, her breasts were just the right size (a c-cup fox to be exact, don't ask how he knows that). Her tail was longer than Jack's but the fur on it was just as white as the rest of her body fur and it was almost twice the diameter of Jacks in terms of fur, a kind of “poofiness” that Jack didn't think was possible on an arctic fox. The way she stood all the time carried a grace that only Jack thought he noticed, her backed always arched perfectly whenever she was standing or sitting down. Her snout was the perfect length and her waist and legs were something that Jack seemed to notice often, with both carrying a very feminine charm having both a look of perfectly toned muscle but also a softness to them, a quality that was perfectly suited to a female predator. Her nose was a perfect color of black, that never shined never sparkled and never shown to be irritated. Her feet and paws were on the smaller side but had a padding to them that was seemed an almost perfectly flesh pink coloration, most likely strengthened due to the excersize she does for the girl's lacrosse team. She was wearing gym shorts over her leggings as well as a dark purple cancer awareness t-shirt from the walk that took place last year. Jack never grew tired of admiring her, ever since 6th grade Jack had always looked at her from a distance; even when in the same class he always looked from the sidelines, wishing that he could look into those French Violet eyes not as a bystander, but as a friend, and something more.

Cynthia took notice of Jack's stare looking at him in slight confusion. Jack's eyes grew to saucers and desperately tried to position himself away from her stare to make it as if he wasn't gauking at her. The action ended up with Jack turning and slamming himself straight into the row of lockers next to him. The banging sound of the locker caught a few snickers from Brian and Steve, and a few giggles from the group of friends that Cynthia was with. Cynthia merely seemed to look away without any interest, but Jack thought he saw her look back at him a couple times in that moment, but maybe that was just the pain of a sore snout talking.

“Go talk to her”

Jack whirled around looking at Brian with wide eyes. The very thought of that action sent a wave of paralysis through Jack's spine. “Me? Talk to her? No way.....”, Jack said crossing his arms and leaning up against the lockers.

The next thing he knew he was about 4 feet in the air and felt a strangely familiar large paw grab him by the shirt. He looked behind him in complete terror as he knew what Brian was going to do next. Brian then wound up his arm, “DON'T YOU DAAAAAAAAAAARRRREEEEEE”, and slid Jack right across the floor like an out of control hockey puck. Wind blasting in Jack's face as he slid across the length of the hallway frantically trying to stop itself, “SHIIIIIIIIIIIII..... OOOF”, Jack was cut off by the sudden appearance of a wall, the wall that just so happened to belong to the hallway that Cynthia and her friends were walking down and just so happened to be standing right next to the area of impact.

“Arrrrggggghhhhhhh...... When I get my hands on the fucking liger I'm gonna.....”, Jack looked to realize that he was being looked upon his raised eyebrows and looks of concern, noticing that Cynthia snorted from the giggles that were escaping her mouth (an action that Jack saw as adorable), eventually her friends followed suit but they pertained looks of a more malicious nature. Jack's ears flopped behind his head, his face engulfing itself in a red coloration that wasn't completely noticeable due to his darkish grey fur. “I was just... uuuhhh.... well there was a puddle in the hallway and I stepped on it and I slipped and you know about gaining momentum and all that and.... I'll just be going...”, Jack bolted up and walked away head down from the group of giggling females. Just out of the corner of ear he could hear from a couple of Cynthia's friends, “Can't believe they actually let half-breeds like him in school”, “Honestly the reason he's so stupid is because something probably went wrong in the lab went they were poking at him in a petri dish”.

Jack's ears twitched at the sounds of those comments, for almost his entire life he's heard those kinds of comments. “Sorry about that, I thought that would've gone better.....”, Brian said to Jack rubbing his paw on the back of his head. Jack ran about a million different situations in his head, one in which he would kick Brian in the nuts, bite his nose off, rip off his tail, but.... “It's fine.... super pissed.... but it's fine....”, hiding how he was feeling was difficult for Jack, for Jack still had his ears back and his hands in his pockets.

“You know you're never gonna be able to ask her out if you don't try talking to her”, Steve said with a raised eyebrow.

“C'mon guys, like I said it's 'never gonna happen' cause I'm definitely not her type and say that in the extremely unlikely scenario where I DO ask her out, the probability of her saying yes is 1,000,000,000 to 4”, Jack said while rolling his eyes.

“Dude, you really need to stop complaining about this. Just grow a pair and ask her out! You won't know if she'll yes or no if you just do it! We've had the conversation a thousand times!!!!!!!!!!”, Brian said with a very frustrated face and furrowed brow.

Before Jack could respond to Brian's comment, Jack was once again pushed into the locker, hard, by a large body with a clearly violent intent. Jack looked to his attackers and once again began thumping his foot in anger. The parade of snickers coming from the one and only Stanford Prowler and his Crew. Standford Prowler was the classic stereotypical jock, he was a light-brown timber wolf with pale amber eyes, he was 3/4 the height of Brian and the star quarter back of the football team. He had beige patches all over him in an almost tattoo-esque manner, one in which ran down the length of his chest in the shape of a lightning bolt that he showed off often.He was well kept in both muscle and fur, however his personality was something to vomit over, for he was a rotten mammal from the inside-out and the bane of Jack's existence since elementary school. Jack has about 300 unpleasant memories, and about 236 of them involved him, for every shove, kick, name, and torment that Jack endured was because of him.

Stanford turned around to face Jack, “So FABBIT? How are you and your faggot friends doin' this morning?”, fabbit was one of Stanford's favorite words to call Jack, not only was it duragatory to Jack but also was a play on words for faggot, a word that Brian especially hated. The worst part about it was that Jack couldn't do anything, for all it would do is give him and his cronies more of a reason to to snap Jack in two.

Stanford walked past Steve straight to Jack and stared him straight in the eye, “You be careful where you put your little paws there fabbit, make the wrong move and shit could get ugly. So you come within 2 feet of Cynthia again, me and the boys will tear you and your little faggot friends to pieces. GOT IT?”, Standford said with a growl. Martin Grizolli knocked the books that were in Steve's hands and popped one of his glass lenses out of its socket. With Connor Buckley pasting something on the back of Brian's back. Cynthia was always a sensitive topic between Jack and Standford, for Standford was the self-proclaimed boyfriend of Cynthia despite the fact that everyone knew they never really dated. The sad part was also that Brian couldn't do anything either, for if he put a single scratch on Standford every single sports team in the school would go after him. Steve was in the same boat, with having no ability to fight back whatsoever.

As the crap pack left the trio Jack looked back to Brian and pointed his finger right at the crap pack, “That is also another reason why I can't ask her out. For I risk the actual event of my murder. Plus what can I do, that son of a bitch is constantly on my tail waiting for me to mess up”, Jack slouched down against the locker holding his knees to his chest.

“I get it man, but soon enough we're gonna be seniors and outta this place before you know it”

“You can't let that guy push you around the rest of your life either dude, or you'll end up like Biff from the Back to the Future movies”, Steve chimed in as he gathered his papers from the floor.

“Guys I know you're looking out for me but I mean what's the point? My whole life so far has just been filled with unpleasant memories of people judging me both publicly and silently. After what happened in middle school I realized that I'll just never be accepted for who I am both here and the real world. I mean look at me! I'm a literal walking contradiction, I am the kit of a fox and a rabbit, both natural enemies and predator and prey. I'll always just be another freak of science, made in a perti dish.....”

Steve and Brian looked at each other with looks of concern and tried to change the subject. “So, we're gonna test out the 'Go-kart' today right? I think all the calibrations are done and it's ready for testing, whaddya say?, Steve said with an overenthusiastic voice. Jack looked up at Steve and Brian, “Yeah, I guess we do need to do that... see you guys at the harbor?”, Jack asked with a forced smile.

“You bet your freakin' briches buddy”, Brian said with a wide grin.


	3. Chapter 2: Some Mistakes lead to good experiences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FAMILIAL TENSION RISING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! S**** ABOUT TO GET REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jack furiously thumped his foot while waiting for Brian and Steve to come to the harbor just outside of Lion's Gate Station. Jack was always the first one to come to their testings but Brian and Steve were never 20 minutes late for anything, especially OCD Steve. The harbor was nothing special, there were a few fishing boats docked in the area but most were either small or medium sized, probably owned by mammals who use them during the summer months to get away from the hustle and bustle of the inner city. Next to the testing area was an old abandoned warehouse about 500 yards away, it's been abandoned for so long many people have either forgotten what it was originally used for or forgotten its existence all together. So to pass the time Jack checked up on the “Go-kart”.

The truth was that the Go-kart was actually a remote control rocket of Jack and steve's design. It was about 4 feet in height and used a nitro-glicerin magnesium fuel of Steve's deisgn that was proven multiple times to be extremely powerful. The body was of Jack's design, having a very futuristsic design, having the traditional three wings for support, however the rocket's thruster could be moved via remote control at high speeds thanks to the addition of motorized dorsal fins. Getting extremely frustrated at the lateness of his friends his plugged in his ICarrot earpiece and called Brian.

“Dude, you were supposed to be here 20 minutes ago, where are you? And have you heard from Steve?”, Jack asked in a frustrated manner.

“3....2.....1”, Brian said over the call, eventually tapping on Jack's shoulder. Jack turned around to see Brian carrying the remote to the rocket as well as a six-pack of root beer.

“You know that stuff's gonna melt your teeth if you drink too much of that?”, Jack said with a condescending tone.

“What? I can't help that this stuff is so good, call it whatever you want but it's a guilty pleasure for me”, Brian said while shrugging his shoulders.

“Or a one way trip ticket to diabetes”, Steve chimed in behind Brian, “How 'bout we stop talking about Brian's exponential sugar intake and let's get this test rollin'”, Steve said while waving his hoof in a circular motion.

“Alright let's start the countdown boys”, Jack signaled to Steve as he was finishing the final checks and preparations.

The trio stepped back about 10 yards from the rocket, “Alright.... 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.... LAUNCH!!!”, Jack yelled to Brian, Brian pressed the initiation button. They waited... they waited... they waited... nothing happened. The trio looked at each other with raised eyebrows and looked to the rocket. The rocket started to fall over and fell over pointed straight at them. “DUCK!!!! FUCK AND COVER!!!!!!!”. Jack jumped behind a large water barrel, Steve jumped to the nearest light post, and Brian didn't jump at all. 20 seconds past before Jack and Steve came of of their hiding places. Jack walked over furiously towards the rocket.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????? WE WORKED ON THIS THING FOR 3 MONTHS AND IT JUST FLOPPS OVER LIKE A MENTALLY DISABLED GOLDFISH????”, Jack screamed in frustration. He kneeled down and leaned over the rocket looking to see what went wrong, “I thought we checked to see if the stand was stable, the sensor should have been working for the remote....”, the next thing Jack knew he was flying.... he didn't know why he was flying...... but he was flying..... After about 15 seconds of registration reality struck him, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”. He was flying on the rocket, not realizing that he grabbed onto the rocket harder as he should have.

He was now flying through the streets of zootopia, not knowing exactly where he was heading or where he was now. He guessed that Steve must have been trying to control the rocket as best he could from the remote. With the wind blasting in his face, Jack called Brian over his ear piece, “DUDE WHAT THE FLYING FREAKITTY FUCK IS HAPPENING?????????????”, Jack screamed into the ear piece. The wind was inhibiting Jack's ability to hear Brian somewhat but thanks to his bunny hearing he was able to decipher what Brian was saying.

“DUDE! Someone messed with the rocket messed up the launch! Steve's controlling the rocket as best he can but we're slowly starting to lose the signal! You're going to have to take control of the rocket manually! Cause once we lose the signal the rocket will start going on a random flight pattern! And with the fuel that Steve made that rocket's gonna to make a really big boom!”

“Alright!”, Jack worked against the immense wind that was being pushed against him to open a panel on the rocket to expose the internal wiring. The wires in front of him were for the movement and control of the rocket. He grabbed the main wires and looked ahead of him and his eyes grew to the size of saucers.

He was heading straight for city hall, and if that rocket crashed into that building it wouldn't just labled as destruction of property but a terrorist attack! He pulled the wired hard to the left and the rocket swearved down what seemed like City Street. He looked down and realized that he was zooming over Little Rodentia. “How could this get any worse......”

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“Alright now I'm letting you off with a warning, but you will be ticketed if you are caught speeding again ma'm”

“Thank you officer”, the car pulled off.

Officer Connor Wolford was finishing up another day of meaneal tasks and frequent speeding tickets. Every since the end of the Nightshade War things have been extremely quiet, especially when Hopps took office as Chief of the ZPD. He entered his empty cruiser on account of his rookie partner being sick, bad cause of the flu. He looked on his dashboard to see a picture of his wife and son at his 55st birthday party. “33 years you've been in this business wolford, been good, but maybe you might wanna hit the hay in a little bit”, he sighed to himself.

Before entering a state of deep thought his cruiser started to rumble slightly, at first he thought it was probably a group of elephants walking behind him on the way to the Business District. Until he looked out his window to see a rocket zoom past him with an all too familiar face riding it. The Radar Gun on his dashboard went crazy reading 180 mph. “What in the hell is that kid doing?!”, he scrambled for his radio. “Wolford to base we gotta 10-15 going down towards savannah central! Rocket barreling down Bear Street as a possible 10-89! I repeat rocket barreling down as possible 10-89! Also get me the Chief, I know who's on the rocket!”

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“Shit that was Uncle Wolford's cruiser!”, Nick yelled in his head. He immediately put his eye back to where he was going. He was heading straight for the center of Savannah Central! “Alrightalrightalright! Think think think think think THINK!”. A bright lightbulb went off in his head. He positioned the rocket upwards going higher and higher but high enough that he'd end up jumping the height of a 4 story building. He looked below him to see Savannah Central, thankfully not many people are never in Central on Tuesday's, and he wondered where he could land the rocket, he looked at the center fountain. “THERE!”, he yelled. He pointed the nose of the rocket downwards to a nose-dive position, as the rocket barreled down he noticed a couple of mammals looking up and at him.

“GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!!!”

The mammals around the fountain ran away in all directions, “3...2...1.... NOW!”, Jack jumped off the rocket, trying to position himself mid-air to land on his feet, he did...... but lost his balance and rolled like a bowling ball down an alley. When he came to a screeching halt, he looked up to see the rocket hit the fountain.

It burst in an explosion that sent dozens of chunks of concrete flying and leaving behind small sparks of fire that looked like fireflies dancing in broad daylight. Pieces fell all over the circle around the fountain, one piece even getting lodged into the large palm tree on the path that led to downtown. Small pieces of flame danced on the sidewalk, burning away nearby patches of grass. “Sweet Cheese and Crackers Steve what did you put in that thing?”, Jack asked himself with a look of awe and terror. As he watched everything settle and the small fires burn out, reality struck him when he heard the sounds of sirens coming from behind him. “Aaaaahhhh butter biscuits......”, he said to himself with his ears flopped down. A few large shadows loomed over him, after letting out a huge sigh he turned around to face the officers.

In front of him stood Wolford, Micksley, Moosarine, and a rookie that must have just joined the precinct. “Hey Uncle Wolford...... How're the wife and kids?”, Jack said with a nervous grin and flopped ears. The 4 large mammals stared at his with intense scowls, all remained silent until Officer Wolford broke the silence, “You're mom's not gonna be happy about this...”, he said with a straight and deadpan expression.

“She never is.......”

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The ride in Wolford's car was silent the whole length of the trip to Presinct 1, so silent in fact the only sound that was being made between the two mammals was the sound of breathing. The cruiser come to a complete stop and Wolford stepped out of the cruiser and opened Jack's door. “C'mon Jack, your mom's waiting for you”.

Jack let out a huge sigh and stepped out of the cruiser and walked by Wolford's side. Jack held his ears back and his head down towards the floor as he walked into the building with the hands cuffed in front of him. Jack could feel the judgmental stares coming from the officer's in the lobby, Jack even heard one of the officer mumble, “It's a real shame, with his mom and dad being such great cops you'd think he'd be better. I'd hate to have him as my son, just one big disappointment”. Jack's eyes started to glass up after the sound of that comment. A disappointment, that's all Jack was to the world.... a freak, a fabbit, a rox, a scientific outrage, a disappointment.

He walked over to a door that read “Chief Judy Wilde” on the window and when he looked to the right of the door he saw his dad Nick leaning against the wall fake reading the sports section of the Zootopia Times. His dad looked up, sighed, folded up the newspaper and stuck it in his belt. When Nick reached Jack Jack said nothing and continued to look at the floor. In front of his face Jack saw his father unlock the cuffs that restrained his hands. When the cuffs fell to the floor Jack looked up at his father with glassy eyes. Nick sighed and looked his on with a half-grin on his face, with Nick's eyes saying that everything was going to be alright. “C'mon, the dark lord's waiting for you”, Nick walked his son to the door of his wife's office.

The inside of Judy's office was very similar to Bogo's, although the desk was resized to fit her needs. The room itself was large in scale to compensate the size variation of the mammals in the ZPD. Around the room were bookcases full of old reports, cases, awards, and photos of various kinds, from the retirement party of chief Bogo to Jack's first birthday party. All happy memories from a different time.

Jack sat in the chair in front of Judy's desk. There are a few things that Jack fears in this world, with his mother being number 1 on the list. They sat there silently with Nick standing to the right of Jack just in sight of his peripheral vision. Judy stapled some things together and then stopped, got up, walked around the desk, and stood in front on Jack. WHACK! Judy hit Jack's left cheek so hard that the after-feeling was similar to a thousand acupuncture needles jamming into him at once. As much as Nick wanted to help he knew that once he wife was on a tyraid, she couldn't be stopped.

“WHAT IN THE SAM-HELL WERE YOU THINKING???!!!”, Judy screamed with fury in her amethyst eyes.

“I...”, Jack was about to speak but was interrupted by his mother. “Not only do you lie to me about the fact that you weren't testing a go-kart at all but a rocket, you deliberately betrayed mine and your father's trust to gain WHAT?”, she continued, “Our forensics team just got back and found residue of nitroglycerin, magnesium, and 3 other highly explosive materials at the site of the fountain. WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET NITROGLYCERIN?”

Jack wanted to stay as quiet as possible to see if his mother would cool down but he knew he had to answer her question within the next 5 seconds or else he'd end up with another supercharged mother slap. “Steve got it on skreebay....”, Jack mumbled. Judy looked at her son with even more fury, “Skreebay? Skreebay? That's where Steve got it? Well I know where I'm calling next after we're through with this conversation!”, Judy threw her arms up in frustration. The truth was that Jack didn't get the explosives from Skreebay but a very close confidant, but if his mom knew who Jack got it from she'd send the entire ZPD after him.

His mother proceeded to walk over to the back of her desk and grab a remote from a drawer. “I want you to look at this”, she pressed a button on the remote that turned on the TV stationed on the ceiling of her office. The channel was tuned to ZNN, and Jack knew exactly what they were going to be talking about.

“We are here live at the scene of a massive explosion that just occurred only 2 hours ago here in Savannah Central. We have just learned that the explosion was caused due a rouge rocket that barreled through the streets of Little Rodentia and many others. The rocket was made by the son of Chief of police Judy Wilde and officer Nick Wilde, Jack Wilde. Apparently the rocket was by his own design, including highly explosive materials that could have serious damaging if afflicted upon the populace. Thankfully no injuries were sustained by any of the surrounding onlookers and only the fountain was affected”

Judy turned off the TV and looked back to Jack, “Do you know what this does to this family? You've not only tarnished the reputation of your father and I but you've put a huge red flag on your permanent record! No school, job, or any institution will accept you anywhere! You were lucky that no one was hurt at all in the explosion, but it is still destruction of Zootopia property! Do you know how much it'll cost to repair? 12,000,000 dollars! You're lucky that you're still considered a minor or else you would have been catered off to Zootopia Penitentiary by now! For the past 2 hours I've been up to my ass in phone calls from the mayor and city officials! Do you have anything to say?” Judy asked with a very expectant look.

“What do you want me to say?”, Jack said behind gritted teeth. Judy eyes flared up, “ANYTHING!!! Don't you feel bad at what you did at all? The destruction you caused? The breach in my trust?”.

Jack stood up in a rage, “That was not my fault! Someone messed with the rocket and it went haywire! If I let that rocket go the second I realized I was flying, it would've landed straight into city hall! And if I wasn't there people would've actually gotten hurt or worse. And you know what I liked about your little tyraid there, the fact that you mention you and dad's reputation and careers over, well I don't know, my personal safety? The fact that I saved people from getting hurt? Why **did** you do that? Was it because you were worried about how people were going to see the best cops in zootopia after their genetic freak of a son did something on accident? Or maybe it's because I've just become so fucking embarrassing to be around that all I am to you now is a FUCKING DISAPPOINTMENT!!!!!!!!!”, Jack's eyes turned to predatory slits while unsheathing his claws, which showed a pent up fury that was built over years of torture and judgement from others. Judy took a half a step back in response to Jack's sudden change in eye shape. Jack looked into his mother equally furious eyes and they held their gaze of challenge until Judy broke the silence.

“You are grounded forever”

Jack furrowed his brow further, “What?”

“You are grounded until you graduate from college, no TV, no phone, no computer, and no friends until you graduate college, and you are to focus on school and work and nothing else”

Jack looked into his mother's eyes with an intense rage, in his mind he was thinking of every possible scenario of what he wanted to do to her, none of them legal. Jack stomped out of the room grabbing and slamming the door behind him with enough force to actually cause the glass window to crack.

“Well that went better than expected”, Nick finally said to lighten the mood.

Judy looked at her husband and sighed, collapsing on the chair that Jack sat in. Tears started to build up in her eyes, Nick went and embraced his wife in a deep hug, “What are we going to do Nick, how are we ever going to protect him now? Those Species First and Anti-Unity people are going to use this against him and try to have Jack put down....... Oh god my baby.... where did I go wrong...”, tears flowed from Judy's eyes causing a wet stream to form on Nick's police uniform.

“We'll do what we always do Judy, we'll be there for him, even if he doesn't want us there.”

Judy looked up at Nick, sorrow engulfing her like a plague, “You did nothing wrong, WE did nothing wrong, with all the stuff he's been through... I'm surprised he hasn't turned to drugs yet..... I'm here for you fluff... I always will be...”.

Judy let out a watery sigh, “Why can't you be the bad guy for once?”. Husband and wife hugged together, both in a deep trance of sorrow and worry for their son.

 


	4. Chapter 3: From Freak to Famous

Last night Jack spent the night in his parent's apartment alone. His memories were a bit fuzzy from the rage he was in. He remembered a series of curses and rants that he went on as well as knocking over some furniture. He also remembers Brian and Steve trying to contact him multiple times throughout the night but chose to ignore them.

He lay in his bed all night deep in thought, thoughts that swirled in his mind like a toxic sludge building up viscosity and mass as he lay there for longer. He remembered an old and horrifying memory, the infamous middle school conundrum. He thought back on what happened and wondered if he deserved what they did to him, that some higher power saw who he was and wanted to make every moment of his life as miserable and as grueling as possible.

Jack looked to the clock and saw it read 5:30. Seeing that his parents never came home from the station he got up and got ready for school. Going through his usual routine except when he went to put on his clothes he chose one of his sweatshirts with the largest hoodie, the ZPD sweatshirt the got as a gift from his mom. He wanted to physically vomit in his mouth, but proceeded to grab a baseball cap he always borrowed from his dad. He put on his usual cargo shorts, grabbed his backpack and walked to school without breakfast.

Jack never realized how far his school was from his apartment, cause his mom and dad always drove him to school. But this walk felt especially long, especially since he felt the need to avoid eye-contact with every mammal he came across. He felt lucky because no mammal in his neighborhood ever got up at around 6:00 in the morning. However he decided to take the long way to school, the back way that would have the least amount of prying eyes.

Jack came around 5 minutes early to school but chose to stand at the front door. He wondered what would happen when he walked in there, an extra brutal beating from Stanford, looks of judgement from his teachers, gossip and judgement from his peers, or a combination of all three? He wondered how Brian and Steve were doing, seeing how they were over a mile away from the scene of the explosion. Did his mom call Steve's? What happened to Brian? He felt it fine if they didn't get in trouble, plus he knew that Steve especially would break under the pressure. With a deep breath and a long sigh, Jack flipped off his hood and took off his baseball cap and entered the Thunderdome.

Jack braced himself physically and mentally for the force that was to converge upon him when he entered the school. When he opened the doors, all eyes in the hallway looked upon him. He braced himself for it but tried to keep a straight face... until. “ROCKET MAMMAL!”, someone yelled in the hallway. That caused Jack to give a huge raised eyebrow. Until all sense of security left him when everyone in the hallways converged upon him with huge smiles and expectant face, gathering around him lke he was a taco truck that only came to the city once a year.

“DUDE WHAT WAS IT LIKE RIDING THAT ROCKET?”

“YOU LOOKED TOTALLY FUCKING BADASS DUDE!”

“CAN I GET YOUR NUMBER?”

“CAN YOU BUILD ME ONE OF THOSE ROCKETS?”

Confused and somewhat frightened by the massive crowd that had gathered around him the only thing he could muster out of his mouth was, “excuse me?”. The crowd fell silent for a solid second but was interrupted by, “Look at this guy, too considerate to admit the fact he's famous! Dude's not half-bad!”, the string of questions continued after the statement made by a panther sophomore. Slowly the noise started to drown out of the crowd and Jack noticed out of the corner of his eye that Cynthia was staring at him. When she saw that he noticed her gaze she turned away and smiled and blushed slightly, pushing back a part of fur that looked already perfect.

“Was she looking at me?”, Jack asked himself the question that he already knew the answer to but still could not process it.

Realizing that he was going to be late to class he looked to the crowd in front of him, “Look guys I'll talk later I'm gonna be late for class...”. He pushed through the crow of somewhat disappointed students. He brought his phone out of his pocket and texted Steve and Brian, “Computer lab, D block, urgent.”

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After biology Jack headed down to the computer lab, trying to avoid multiple pesky freshman that continuously asked what his Pawstagram account was. What perplexed Jack was why all of a sudden were his peers treating him with such kindness and respect? Asking him for phone number and Pawstagram account, this whole experience was new to him. He tried not to think too hard on it but couldn't shake an underlying feeling, “Why would they like me all of a sudden? I crashed a rocket into a public fountain why would they go crazy over that? And what's this rocket mammal thing about?”, he asked himself before entering the computer lab. He shook his head to dismiss the thought but he kept it in his “personal vault” for later use.

The computer lab was a small room that a rare few individuals still used nowadays. It had 4 computers in total with 2 computers lining each wall, all of them 2000 IPear computers but were heavily modified by Brian over the 3 years they've been attending P1HS. In the back of the room was a storage closet of spare parts that the trio collected over the many months, both old and new that came in handy for multiple engineering projects. On the right-hand side of the room was a book shelf with a whole array of items, computer manuals, textbooks, magazine articles, and many more. Brian was leaning against the wall looking at his phone and Steve was on the first computer on the right hand side of the room.

Brian was the first to look up. “So I see you've discovered the news”, Brian said with a cocky grin. Jack looked at Brian with a puzzled look, “What news? The only thing I know is that when I walked into school this morning expecting an upgraded version of the usual beatings and looks but I get swarmed by a mob of students asking me about phone numbers and calling rocket mammal”. Brian and Steve looked at each other in response to Jack's comment, “So I guess you haven't seen the video?”, Steve asked with a raised eyebrow.

“What video?”, Jack asked

Steve signaled jack to come to the computer. Jack walked over to the computer and looked over Steve's shoulder (thankfully the chairs and the desks were uni-mammal so depsite being on the smaller size for steve it was still large enough to fit Steve's long legs and short enough for Jack to look over his shoulder). The HoofTube video that Steve showed Jack was a recording of Jack's entire journey on the rocket, showing his facial expressions, him jumping off the rocket and having it land in the fountain, him screaming down Bear Street, everything and at multiple differnt angles. What added to the video were the edited sound effects and cartoonish music in the background of the acual footage with the title of the video saying, “ROCKET MAMMAL RIDES TO GLORY!”.

Jack stood there dumbfounded. To the general public and the ZPD we was a suspected felonist, but on the internet he was a super star. The video itself already recieved over 5,000,000 views on Hooftube with over 300 thousand likes. Putting two and two together he realized why people were going nuts over him and callling him rocket mammal.

“Sweet Cheese and Crackers do you guys know what this means...”, Jack asked, “I'm not only popular in school but I'm an internet super star!!!!!”, Jack yelled happily as he jumped up and pumped his fist in the air.

“That's kinda sad that you're measuring your success by how many random people on the internet like you for crashing and destroying private property”, Steve so happily chimed in.

“Besides, that's the reason why we were trying to call you last night in the first place. To tell you about this video, it exploding worldwide”, Brian clarified, “This video could very well be the end all or be all for you, especially after the conversation that you must have had with your mom and dad”

Jack twitched at the memory of that conversation, he almost forgot about it due to the recent events that occurred in school but with Brian mentioning it it reopened a massive gash in his unpleasant memories. “Right... almost forgot about them......”, Jack mumbled to himself.

“Well you're certainly the talk of the whole school, but like Brian said you should be careful about this video. Remember what happened to Logan Small with his video? That straight ruined his whole life”, Steve chimed in.

Steve and Brian did have a point, the internet wasn't real life and when something was posted on the internet it stayed there forever no matter how much you try to get rid of it. Jack once again dismissed the negative thoughts that entered his mind. “Guys I know what you're trying to do and I appreciate it. But this is probably the best thing that has ever happened to me! I mean I don't have to walk around the halls anymore wondering where my next bitch stare is gonna come from and I haven't even run into Standford once this whole day! And honestly I could care less about what my parents think! They can tell scream at me till their blue in face but you know what I have to say about that?”

“Excuse me is Jack in here?”

The trio turned around to the feminine voice coming from the computer lab door. What they saw was Cynthia Howler poking her head in the computer lab door. Jack was on the verge of hyperventilation, but he mustered everything he had not to lose his cool.

“Yeah c'mon in!”, Jack said, “Did I say that too enthusiastically? Will she be weirded out by that?”, Jack thought to himself while trying to keep a straight face. Brian snickered at Jack from the wall, in response Jack glared at Brian with a ferocious intensity.

Cynthia made her way to Jack, “God she smells so nice”, Jack thought to himself. Today Cynthia was wearing a tanktop with the insignia of the school's cheerleading team and black leggings. He noticed that she was wearing a singular earing on her right ear in the shape of a star. “So Cynthia... what brings you herrEEEEEE”, Jack tried to play it cool by leaning on one of the computer desks but missed the it by about 2 inches and fell straight to the floor. Steve and Brian snickered at how ridiculous Jack looked, he would have given them another glare but he was groaning from the impact.

“Are you okay?”, Jack looked up to see Cynthia with worried eyes while offering her paw. It took everything Jack had to repress the urge to turn a shade of red. Jack sprung up like a gopher coming out of its hole, “Yep fine, totally fine, just missed the edge a little hehehe..... So anyway what brings you here?”

Cynthia stared at him for a second but brought herself back to reality. “Yeah I was wondering.. My friend Mary is holding a party Friday night and I was wondering if you wanted to come?”, she asked with a small smile.

All function ceased in Jack's brain. Every nerve-ending, thought, and function had stopped working and was on auto-pilot. “NowaynowaynowaynowaynowaynowaynowaynowaynowaynowaynowaynowaynoWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!”, Jack screamed inside of his head. Jack was beginning to think he was in a dream and started to question reality. Every scenario, every fantasy that he had was coming true, and all he had to do was blow up a fountain with a rocket. Thankfully he brought himself back to reality before the situation could get more awkward. “Yeah! Friday night sounds great? Is it okay if Brian and Steve come to?”, Brian and steve's ears perked up at the sound of that request.

“Yeah that's cool. The party's at 10:00 on 49 Olive Road in the Rainforest District, I'll see you there. Oh and by the way.... this request kinda comes from Mary... is it possible to bring one of your cool inventions to the party? If you can't that's totally cool”, Cynthia asked nervously.

Immediately Jack answered, “Sure, I'll see what I can put together for Friday!”. “Great I'll see you guys then!”, Cynthia went out and closed the door behind her. Not realizing and/or nocticing whether or not she was in front of the door, Jack jumped on Brian, grabbed his shirt, and stared shaking him back violently.

“OOOOOHHHHHH MMMMYYYYY GOOOOOODDDDDDD!!!!!!”, Jack yelled at the top of his lungs, “THIS IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE!”.

Brian yanked Jack off of his shirt and held the over-excited fabbit in the air for a bit before putting him down. “Well I guess one good thing did come out of you blowing up a fountain after-all, all it took was the broken trust of your parents and the destruction of government property”, Brian said with a clear sarcastic tone. Jack rolled his eyes, “You know what man, you can say whatever you want but I'm not gonna let my parents or you bring me down on this one, besides you guys are going to the party right?”

“Of course we are”, Brian and steve said in stereo

“This is the first actual party all of us have been invited to, but there are a few underlying problems...”, Steve inquired.

“And those problems are?”, Jack asked

“1. You're grounded forever right? So how are you going to make it to the party without your parents flipping out? 2. You just made an assumingly empty promise to your **obsession** that you'll come up with another device by Friday despite the fact it took us 3 months to make that rocket, 3. What the heck do you have planned to create with limited materials and constant supervision by your overprotective mom?”

“1. My parents expect me to go to bed every night at 9:30, so when I go to bed I'll create a decoy of myself to throw them off, 2. She's not my obsession and I have this!”, Jack pulled out a long rolled up piece of paper from one of the cabinets he went to the large table in the back of the computer lab and laid out the plan in front of Steve and Brian.

“Are you sure you wanna go with that idea? Remember the first time we tried that out? We got paint bomb all over the gym....”

“This design I've been modifying in my spare time, I've worked out the kinks that went wrong the last time and I'm sure that it'll work. And 3. My parents think I got the materials for the rocket from Skreebay but that's not true, I got it from a very close family friend with a lot of connections”

“And you plan to work on this for the next 2 days straight? Where will you find the time to put it all together?”, Brian asked with a concerned look.

“Let me worrying about the execution, right now, after school I have a date with an old friend”

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Jack walked along Savannah Central hoping that no one would notice him. He hadn't been here in a couple months and the place hadn't changed. This place was his dad's old hustling grounds before he met his mom and became a police officer, and every hustler needs a partner in crime.

Jack walked down an alley on Grass Street to see a purple van parked in right next a large dumpster. Jack walked over to the van and knocked on the side door.

“Cory if that's you.... FUCK OFF! I'll get you the money by Thursday!”, a monotonous voice yelled from inside the van.

“Well does Cory happen to be your favorite nephew?”, Jack said with a smirk.

The van door slid open to reveal Jack's good-ole Uncle Finnick. It never ceased to amuse Jack how misplaced Finnick's voice was compared to the rest of his body, plus it amused Jack the fact that Finnick was only wearing boxer shorts and nothing else. The small fox grinned widely at the sight of his nephew, “Hey Jacky! How ya doin'? See you've been the talk of the town recently! Bet that video has gotten you a good look from a lot of chicks”, Finnick said as he stepped out of the van.

“Actually that's what I'm kinda here for Uncle Finn. I actually need some “supplies”, not as explosive like the last ones”, Jack explained.

“And what prey tell, could this be for?”, The monotonous fox asked

“Well...... ya see I was invited to this party by a girl I really like..”, Jack was interrupted by a series of small punches to his right arm.

“ATTA BOY JACKY YA FINALLY GREW A PAIR!!!”, Finnick yelled in glee, “Ya shoulda started with that and we would've gotten to business!”. Finnick jumped back into his van and started rummaging through his stuff. “By the way do your parents know your here?”

“No they don't, I may be grounded forever but as long the situation calls for 'school', I'm cool”

“Good to hear, also you didn't snitch did ya?”, Finnick asked with a serious tone and raised eyebrow

“Not a chance Uncle Finn, I told them that Steve got the stuff from Skreebay. You know I'd never snitch on you after you saved my butt from those psycho protesters when I was little”

Finnick frowned at the thought of that and looked at Jack, “You know Jack.... you're the toughest kid I know and I've been living these streets my whole life and there's one important thing you always have to remember. 'Never see that they get to you', your dad taught me that phrase but I've been livin' it my whole life. You have it different Jack, you've survived and will have to survive a lot worse than your dad and mom had to endure”, Finnick walked out with a large box but put the box down to put his hand on Jack's shoulder, “Don't be cocky and don't be stupid, cause there's gonna be people out there trying to put you down just for being who you are and will take every opportunity to take you down. And I just want to tell you that your parents and I are gonna be there for you every step of the way. Take it from this old fox, get help wherever you can, but always be wise about where and when to get it”

Jack sighed at the thought of that, he has been a bit rash in the past 24 hours. Thinking about what's happened to him over the years his mom and dad have always been there for him, and Brian and Steve have always been there to support him through the daily beatings. Was he being to harsh with his parents? Was it worth braking their trust again all to impress a girl? Jack sterned in his expression and grabbed the box Finnick put down. Jack turned to Finnick and said,

“Thank you Uncle Finnick, but I realized something long ago... In a world that's against you you have to make your own path. I'm willing to accept the help from those around me to forge that path but the path has to be mine alone. Every decision that I make will make me into the person I'm supposed to be. I'll always be an outsider, I've accepted that... but I'm willing to make sacrifices to find my place in this city.... that's what my parents did didn't they?”, Jack walked off to leave his concerned uncle behind him.

Finnick smirked to Jack, “Good luck kid.... good luck....”

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 4: A Dream turned Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This a the lead up chapter to some of the more darker themes of the story, so be warned if you guys don't like a little violence. Also, BIG SHOUT OUT TO ALL WHO'VE KUDOED!!!!!!!

Friday had come. The project was completed and Jack was able to survive the past two days facing his parents. Much of the time they were quiet amongst themselves, dinner was the most awkward, spending about 35% of the time talking about school and work, never mentioning the incident that happened on Wednesday and the other 65% eating in silence. Nick and Judy inquired why Jack was always staying late from school, Jack told them he was working on an extra credit biology project. It was true, however he already completed the project beforehand to work on the other “project”.

The clock read 9:00, Jack readied everything for his big escape from his apartment. As he set everything up he stopped and thought about what would happen if he was caught, would he be grounded for the rest of his life, would his parents have him taken away, or something else that he didn't anticipate? He furrowed his brow at the thought of that. “If they did any of those things they'd probably say it was 'for the best'..... classic”, he snuffed as he set hid everything in his closet. Just as he put the last piece of the project inside a knock came at his bedroom door.

“Jack?”, it was his mom.

“C'mon in”, he knew he'd probably regret it later but knew it would be better to rip the band-aid off while he still could.

Judy walked into her son's room, having a look of sorrow and concern in her eyes. Jack looked away from his mother and tried to check his phone but his mom took the phone out of his hand and sighed, “You're not getting out of this one Jack...”, she said with a small smirk.

Jack looked at his mom but did not respond, he walked over to his bed and sat down, slouching to somewhat match his mom's height with his ears flopped down. Judy sat to the right of him.

“Jack... I know you probably think I'm the villain here... I understand... I was same way with your grandpa stu when I was younger. In fact when your dad and I started dating I took him to the house in Bunnyburrow to keep him away from the press after the whole nightshade debacle. Some... things ensued and your grandpa called the Mayor's ZPI unit and had your father taken away and muzzled. I never forgave him for that but eventually I slowly realized that despite the terrible execution of his plan he was only looking out for me in his own way and I had no control over that”

“Just get to the point mom...”, Jack sighed.

Judy looked at Jack, she sighed, “My point is... you may be smart, in fact a lot smarter than me when I was your age. But you'll do stupid things as all teenagers do but I just want you to know that your father and I are not trying to control you. With all that's happened over the years and what this family has been through we all have to be careful. Everything I do for you is to protect you and this family, not just because of your father's and my career but for you to be successful and survive. I love you with all my heart Jack.... you, Penny, and your father are the greatest treasures in my life and you are treasures I am not willing to part with”.

Judy grabbed Jacks paws and signaled Jack to look at her. Jack and Judy's eyes both started to glass up showing signs of vulnerability and sadness. Mother and Son embraced for a long time, the feeling that ensued between them was a feeling that Jack thought he lost long ago. Without further words Judy got up from the bed and walked out of her son's room, closing the door behind her.

Jack looked at the clock and it read 9:15, Jack's faced sterned and got up and began prepping everything for the party. First he set up his decoy, he had a buddy of his in the theater department make a close-rendition of Jack that was life-size and believable if faced in a certain direction. It was a pinata that was a few inches shorter than Jack; the entire body was made out cardboard, shaped by balloons that supported the inside of it, and the outside was covered in newspaper clippings that were covered in dark grey painted somewhat sloppily on the entire body, and the tail was made out of a long rectangle of felt that was pieced and knitted to together to look vaguely similar to Jack's. Next to the mannequin Jack placed a Salmonsung Recorder that had a 10 hour recording of Jack's sleep breathing to keep it convincing enough that if his parents did check on him they wouldn't think to disturb him. Jack changed into his party cloths, which consisted of a V-neck black t-shirt and custom designed light brown cargo shorts. He pulled out a ring that was a gift from his aunt Fru-Fru for his 17th birthday, it was a 24 karrot gold ring with Jack's name imprinted on it and put it on his right ring finger. He pulled out his back pack with the “project inside and made for the window.

Before exiting the window Jack looked back to the door and thought to himself, “Sorry mom..... I am not willing to let this one slide”.

Jack opened the window and looked down, despite using the fire-escape often as the quickest means out of his building it always frightened him somewhat to be standing 5 stories high. He shook his head and focused on his goal. He made his way as quickly and as quietly as he could down the fire escape and jumped off the the ladder when he hit the first floor.

Jack looked up once more to where he started off, he sighed and ran off to meet his friends for the party that would one of be the biggest nights of his life.

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Knowing that Brian and Steve would meet up with Jack at the address Jack ran there as fast as he could. He looked at his phone and the time ran 10:15, “Butter buiscuts I'm late...”.

Jack looked up from his phone to see he finally entered the rainforest district. A large area that wove and interconnected through series of mangroves and trees that one could easily get lost in if not careful. The air was humid and a thin mist hovered in the air, lights from each of the houses looked like fireflies that twinkled in the dark air.

If Jack remembered correctly his dad owned an apartment in the rainforest district a while back while he was dating his mom. It was also one of the center-pieces of many of the stories they used to tell him and Penny about their exploits in the Nighthowler case. Jack laughed at the thought of the many hours him and Penny spent sitting in the living room listening to all of the stories that his mom and dad told them, they were cool the first time but got obnoxious the 32nd time IN A ROW. The thought saddened him a little over the realization of how far apart his family grew over the years, was it the same for every family as time went on or did his family just get the worst of it?

Jack put those thoughts into his vault and ran to the adress as fast as he could. When he arrived he was awe struck.

The House was next to Rainbow Falls station only a couple miles out of tundratown, so in the distance you see the slight glowing white emanating from the freshly fallen snow far off in the distance. The house itself was massive, unlike the small, compact apartments that Jack was accustomed to. Although having only two floors, the house was long and from the looks of it had large rooms that could swallow his entire apartment alive. The architecture was that of Spainiard decent Jack believed, with the front housing a massive door that probably designed for larger mammals that had glass windows that shimmered like crystals. Jack couldn't help but stare in awe and thump his foot at the vastness and overall beauty of the house that he was standing in front of. Jack could clearly hear loud music playing from standing outside the door, with the occasional scream of joy or crashing of objects. Unconsciously he felt jealous of how small his apartment was, although it didn't bother him much it was the little kid in him that wanted something like that. The sense of beauty ruined by the snap of the paws that appeared in Jack's face.

“You done eyeing the house or are you gonna ask it out on a date?”, Jack turned around to see Brian appear behind him. He was wearing a purple button down shirt with an olive green tie and khakis, standing behind him Steve, who was wearing his usual Sci-Fi t-shirts (this one being Paw Trek this time), but decided to wear orange colored slacks with a bedazzling belt which made him look like a hipster from the 70's.

“Looks like you guys finally made it, and I must say Steve you look extra Trekky today?”, Jack said with a coy grin.

Steve rolled his eyes at the remark, “I don't like dressing up in fancy clothes, plus the likely hood of people dressing nice in a high school party is 24658 to 14”, he said confidently as he pushed his green glasses back to the bridge of his snout. Jack found Steve's habit of using fraction to determine the outcome or likelihood of a situation hilarious, what was more hilarious was the fact that Steve was wrong about them most of the time.

“Well do you at least have the 'project' you were working on? Wouldn't wanna disappoint any frustrated and drunken peers wouldn't you, cause that could get ugly real quick”, Brian said as he ran his finger across his throat to clearly signal Jack's premature and possible death.

“No one's going to be slicing throats today my queer friend, plus I got the stuff right here”, Jack pointed to his backpack that he was lugging around Zootopia with, “I'm surprised that you didn't bring Roger with you, he'd be all over this kind of thing”

“Couldn't make apparently he's visiting a sick aunt over the weekend, but the way he talked over the phone made it sound like it was something completely different”

“Maybe he's going to the Gaybar without you, you know the one in Tundratown, the Prancing Jackal?”

Brian and Jack looked at Steve with raised eyebrows in complete surprise, “Since when do you know where a gay bar is? You can barely find your own hooves without your glasses on?”, Jack inquired.

Steve straightened at the realization of what he just said, “Uuuuuuhhhhh.... I have a friend who goes there often. And before you say anything no... I am not gay.....”

“We've known that for years dude. But we're not quite sure if your straight either”, Brian teased.

“Alright that's enough shit-talking we gonna do this or what?”

“Hell yeah”, Brian and Steve said in stereo.

“By the way, how'd the decoy work out for you? Did it fool your own mother or the drunk neighbor next door”

Jack's ears flopped down and glared at Brian for his remark. “Sorry sorry didn't mean to touch a nerve...”, Brian putting his paws up in defense.

“Let's just get this over with....”, Jack lumbered to the door, sucked as deep of a breath as he could and knocked on the oversized door.

The door opened with full force, knocking Jack back several feet and having him land on his rear end. Jack looked up to see who unintentionally assaulted him to see Horton Humphrey, an elephant from his school and the defensive lineman for the football team. “Brian? What the hell are you doin' here?”, Horton asked in a low voice.

“Well we're here for the party, Cynthia invited Jack and she extended the invitation to us.... So we're here!”

Horton looked down to see Jack still sitting on his rear end, smiling nervously at the intimidating size of the pubescent individual. “YO BRO! You didn't tell you were friends with Rocket Mammal c'mon in dude!”.

Surprised by the sudden change in attitude from the large mammal, the trio looked at each other and shrugged shoulders. They followed Horton into the awe-inspiring mansion to be a part of the crowd.

“YO GUYS ROCKET MAMMALS' HERE! HE BROUGHT BRIAN TOO!”, Horton yelled from front hallway. A series of hoots and hollering could be heard from what Jack could onyl assume was the kitchen. What distracted Jack from the seemingly deafening music that penetrated Jack's sensitive ears was the scale of the house, the front hallway was huge, with the center of the ceiling hanging a massive glass chandelier that refracted the light with each of the glass crystals created a brilliant light show that danced across the whole hall, the furniture around it was that of a modern design with chairs that seemed to suspend in thin air at first glance. The rest of the house must have looked amazing as well, sadly the decor was ruined with the packed amounts of mammals that were sprawled, jumping, and vomiting all over the place.

“If I ever tried something like this my parents would tie my toes to the back of the cruiser and drag me through tundratown”, Jack thought to himself as he stared at the chaos that was ensuing all over the house.

It seemed that every corner of the house was packed with mammals, some of the kits Jack recognized from school but a good portion of them Jack assumed they were from different schools. The cacophony of sounds was intimidating to Jack, however it also brought a strange sense of pride to him, knowing that he's come this far in his life. When he turned to look at Steve and Brian Jack almost burst out in laughter at Steve's reaction.

Steve has always had a severe case of OCD, especially when it came to organization and cleanliness, so this whole situation was Steve's version of a living hell. Steve was visibly twitching at the sight that was in front of him, his ears were flipping back and forth like fishes out a water, his right eye was convulsing, and his whole body shivered as if he was in below freezing temperatures. He began to step forward, an action that was quickly stopped by Jack and Brian.

“Okay, I know this will be hard for you... but try your best NOT to murder anyone while at this party. Cause it will be bad enough if we're called in for disturbing the piece and the cops will not be happy if they find a dead body in the fridge, so I brought this just in case”, Brian pulled a paper bag out of his back pocket and gave it to Steve.

“What... the fuck...... is this?”, Steve said behind gritted teeth.

“To help you breathing so that way you won't go into shock and kill the party”, Brian said with a worried look

Steve looked at the paper bag, then looked at Brian, then looked at the paper bag, then back to Brian. “If someone vomits on me or gets one stain on my shirt I'm burning this whole house down!”, Steve said as he stormed off randomly into the house.

“Think we should follow him?”, Brian inquired

“Nah.... he'll be fine. But be sure to add arson to the list of felonies that Hannibal Leechtor is capable of....”, Jack said with a deadpan expression.

“JACK, I'm so glad you guys could make it!”

Jack looked to the origin of the sound and once again all functionality in his Brian had ceased. Cynthia was running over to him... TO HIM! Jack slowly began thumping his foot in delight but smashed his fist into his leg to bring himself back to reality, an action that helped but left a good amount of discomfort for his joints. Brian snickered at Jack's response to his bad habits, Jack chose to ignore him.

Jack noticed that Cynthia was wearing black leggings that particularly outlined the bottom half of her body quite well and a white and pink Super-Girl thick-strap tank-top.

Cynthia came over to Jack and didn't take notice of Brian, “Good to see that you were able to come... OH Brian how's it goin'.... where's your gazelle friend?”

Jack and Brian looked at each other nervously, until Jack responded, “If you hear an unnecessarily high pitched scream, smell of smoke, or the inflation and deflation of a paper bag then you'll see where Steve is”

Cynthia game a confused smile and raised eyebrow, “Okay... anyway, it's good to see that you came! Why are you wearing your backpack, this isn't exactly a study session you know?”

“Well it just so happens to be the 'project' that you requested on Wednesday”

Cynthia's lapis eyes beamed at the declaration, “REALLY? You were actually able to build? I honestly thought that you'd come to the party empty handed which would've been fine but you actually got something? That's awesome! Can I see?”

Jack started to blush he was about to reveal his entire plan and act until Brian stepped in, “We think it's best to leave it for whenever people are ready and sober... some-what sober...”, Brian said with an awkward smile.

“Yeah you're probably right, sorry for trying to ruin your groove, I'll go get Mary and see when you guys can show off your whattchamawhosit. Is it okay with you guys if you do at the pool?”

Brian and Jack's jaws hit the floor metaphorically, “This place has a pool?”, they asked in stereo.

“Yeah it does.... Mary's parents are stupid rich and she throws parties like this all the time. If I gotta be honest it's the first time I've been to one of these...”, She said with shrugged shoulders and a small smile.

Jack was in awe in how relaxed Cynthia was in front of him. Most mammals who ever talked to him who weren't his parents, Brian, or Steve were always uncomfortable around Jack, never really making eye contact and always fidgety. Cynthia however was completely calm around him, calm, collected, slim, kind, compassionate...

“Cute....”

Cynthia looked up, “Did you say something, sorry the music's a bit loud in here”. Realizing what he just said out loud his face burned like a fire and changed to a fiery red coloration. “NOPE NOTHING NOTHING... I just said uuuuuhhhh... Cold, it's a bit cold in here....”, Jack nervously exclaimed.

Cynthia gave him another confused look, “really it's 75 degrees in here? Ah well, guess your more of a climate control kind of guy?”, Cynthia stated as she put her left hand on her hip. It was a gesture that Jack found incredibly alluring but knew that if he gazed anywhere below her eyes it would spell death and disaster for him. “SOOOOO .... we were gonna ask your friend about the pool?”, Jack said desperately trying to change the subject.

“OH RIGHT! C'mon I'll introduce you to her”, Cynthia signaled Jack to follow her. Jack looked back to Brian and Brian shrugged, “She's not my obsession, go on ahead lover boy”

Jack gave Brian a frustrated look and rolled his eyes to follow Cynthia. As Brian watched the obsessed Funny walk with his obsession he thought to himself, “Where is that crazy gazelle?”

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Standford got in his truck with Martin and Connor after trashing the house of one of the kits from Tundratown High after he refused to give up the helmet he stole from Connor. Stanford smiled to himself, “It's good to be king...”.

“Yo Stan, by the way, we goin' to Mary's party or what heard Cynth's gonna be there...”, Martin grinned, making a very cartoonish action with his eyebrows.

“Yeah why the fuck not? Could be fun anyway's, plus I've been meaning to have a little talk with Dave about touchin' my stuff in the locker room”, Standford smiled maliciously.

“Oh yeah I also heard Jack and his freak squad are gonna be there”, Connor stated out of the blue.

Standford and Martin looked at Connor like he had 6 heads, with Standford's surprised face slowly shifting into one of malice and hate, baring his teeth and began to growl from the back of his throat. Connnor slinked back farther into his seat to try to avoid the wrath of his buddy.“Say what again?”, Standford asked behind gritted teeth.

“Ya didn't hear? Cynth invited Jack and his freak squad to the party, apparently he made another one of the gadgets to show off at the party. I thought you were in the loop man...”, Connor asked nervously.

Standford rammed on the gas of his truck and sped out of Tundratown, sending Connor flying backward into the back window.

“WOAH MAN WHAT THE FUCK'S YOUR PROBLEM YOU TRYNA GET US KILLED?!”, Martin screamed from the passenger seat.

“We're goin' to the party, and we're gonna tear that fabbit apart....”

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“Wait you want me to do it now... like right now?”, Jack asked with concern in his eyes.

“Yeah totally! It'd be pretty sway if you were able to do it! Besides, nobody's usin' the pool and it's empty. That'd be perfect for your little experiment”

Mary was a ferret and a close friend of Cynthia's. She was half Jack's height and had intense flaming red eyes, she was mostly had dark brown fur however she had white fur that outlined the bottom of her chin and around her abdomen. She had at least 4 piercings on her right ear and she always wore black punk rocker jackets with spikes outlining the tops of her shoulders, she also wore black leather jeans which Jack always knew must have killed your legs during the summer months and in sahara square. She also had a pink see thourgh scarf wrapped around her neck as well as a tight black-floral pattern g-string tank top.

“I mean are you sure you want me to do it there cause I don't know whether or not I can get it set up in the next few minutes...”, Jack stated while rubbing his paw behind his head.

“Awwwwww, you afraid your little boy toy won't work or did your balls shrink when ya came in here?”, Mary said teasingly.

Jack glared somewhat at Mary, for she and him had a strange relationship ever since middle school. She never bullied him per-say but she always teased him to no end, and he already had enough of that from his dad and sister at home. “1. I'm sure it'll work, and 2. They haven't shrunk at all mind you...”, Jack said behind gritted teeth. Cynthia giggled at the prospect of his response, causing Jack to blush slightly.

“All right then... let's get this party started..”, Maru said with a wide grin.

Mary's backyard was large and expansive, with three large mangrove trees lining across the back fence and at the center of the backyard a large nearly perfect ovular pool at least 12 feet deep. The outside of the pool was lined with fancy white lawn chairs, with only a small handful of mammals occupying them

Jack made his way down to the bottom pool of the empty pool while Mary and Cynthia gathered the party guests to the backyard. Jack nervoudly rummaged through his backpack and pulled out what he called his “Party crasher”. I was a skateboard of his own design that he made from extra fiberglass and aluminum that he borrowed from his school's shop class, this board however had some additional features. As Jack set up his little project he started to hear the sounds of loud chatter grow closer to the pool as well as some vibrations most likely from the footsteps of some of the larger mammals

Jack looked up to see that most of the party guests were staring at him. The aura of over 60 teenagers looking down upon you in expectancy was extremely unnerving to Jack, causing him to tense up in fear and anxiety. He looked around and found Brian standing next to Cynthia and Mary, with Mary giving him the thumbs up to get going.

“Hey guys... how's it going?”, no response, “Well I just put together this little thingamagig for the party and I think it's pretty cool aaaaannnnddd I should probably shut up and get going...”. Jack's last remark drew a few snickers from the crowd.

“Let's get this party started....”, Jack got on his skateboard and got into position, he pressed a button on his phone and the magic began.

Miniature rocket thrusters went off on the sides of the skateboard, sending Jack flying forward. When he hit the slope of the pool the skateboard sent him flying at least 30 feet in the air. On the way down Jack activated another button on his phone and as he descended streams of colors erupted from the back of the skateboard in red, blue, green, white, and violet. Each time Jack descended he would let a different color cloud descend upon the know ecstatic populace that was watching him work, and every time he ascended he made sure to give them a show that they would never forget.

Despite the ever encompassing fear that clouded around Jack's mind as he ascended and descended from the air... he felt free. Being up there and living among the cloud of colors somehow felt like home to him. There was no one there to stare at him in malice, no one there to call him names, no one there to disappoint, only him and the colors dancing in the wind.

Jack came to his final decent and halted at the bottom of the pool again. As he waited for the colors to dissipate he set up his final act. The crowd around the pool cheered as the cloud settled but were confused on what Jack what doing.

Jack stood up the skateboard, set up the stand, pressed the magic button and off the skateboard went. Everyone watched in awe as the skateboard ascended higher and higher until it reached its maximum height, Jack pulled out his phone once more and let the light show begin.

The skateboard exploded into a bright array of colors, into the shapes of miniature stars exploding in the night sky. Red and violet clashed in an epic battle that could stand the test of time, and the creation of a moment that would live in infamy. Jack thought to himself, “I guess sometimes two wrongs really do lead to a right after-all”, Jack smiled to himself, “I wish you could see this mom, especially you dad, too bad I don't have the guts to do so....”.

When the last light burst in all its glory the crowd around the pool fell silent and continued to look to the sky as if the show never stopped. When reality sunk in the crowd they started to cheer, “ROCKET! ROCKET ROCKET ROCKET ROCKET!!!!!!”. Those hoots, howls, and hollers could probably be heard from all over the rainforest district. As the crowd cheered Jack's new name he looked to see Cynthia cheering as well with Brian, but Brian and Cynthia weren't cheering rocekt, “JACK JACK JACK JACK JACK!”. Jack eyes started to glass over but he wiped away the tears before they could form. For the first time in his life, he felt proud of himself, he felt accepeted, he felt welcolmed outside of his home. For Jack it was the happiest moment of his life so far, and he wanted to stay in that moment forever.

Jack climbed out of the pool as best he could and had multiple times where he almost fell down straight back to the bottom. When he got up and out of the pool his back was hit with the impact force of a semi and flew straight forward into the ground. He got up and looked behind him to see Brian who accidentally hit him with too much force in his excitement.

“YA DIDN'T DIE AFTER-ALL!!!!!”, Brian picked up Jack and gave him an Uncle Ben death hug that if he squeezed Jack any harder his spinal column would crack and shatter like glass.

“Spine... breaking.... can't.....breathe.....”, Jack comlpained under a raspy voice.

'Woops! Sorry man got carried away...”, Brian laughed.

Jack felt a pinching sensation on his rear-end which made him yip like a kit and turn around growling slightly. It was Mary with the most cheesy grin on her face. “Well looks like ya do have a pair afterall there slick! Gotta admit it was quite a show!”. Jack gave Mary a raised eyebrow, “Never pinch me like that again....”. Mary grinned even wider, “What you savin' that for some 'private' time? Speaking of which, since you're half bunny and fox would you be the predator or the prey in that relationship?”. Jack blushed extraneously at the prospect of that and wanted nothing more than to strangle her, until a consistent but not hard series of slaps came onto Jack's back. Jack turned around to see Cynthia smiling widely, “That was amazing! Way more than I expected for sure! Good for you!”, Jack started laughing nervously, “aaaawww it was nothin' just an old design choice with a little added features...”

“Why don't you tell about it more inside where it's a bit more quiet? I can barely hear a thing out here”

Jack's ears exploded into red, although he knew he was probably reading too far into it, however the imagination center of his brain was going wild, with Jack unintentionally thumping his foot in excitement. Cynthia caught onto to his action and gave him a confused stare, Jack's eyes grew into saucers and he forced his leg to stop, “Sorry, weird habit I have... get it from my mom's side....”, Jack said nervously.

Cynthia rolled her eyes, “Whatever Thumper, c'mon let's go inside”

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Standford looked briefly at the speedometer of his truck, “95”, he thought to himself. Martin and Connor were death gripping the seats of the car and staying deathly quiet, to both not die from a car crash and not invoke Standford's wrath. Standford stopped the truck short, sending connor flying into the passenger seat and having Martin bash his head into the dashboard. “Dude next time we head to a party... I'm drivin'”, Martin said behind gritted teeth as he rubbed the front of his snout in pain.

Standford shot out of the driver seat storming off to the front door of Mary's house, still hearing the loud music as well as some seriously loud chatter which was uncommon at parties like this. Standford banged on the door as loud as he could, a few seconds later Horton came to the door and let Standford in, “Yo Standford, I thought you said you weren't gonna come to the party, well good to see that your here but you're kinda late. You missed a ton!”. Standford looked at Horton with a raised eyebrow, “What did I miss?”.

“Well the first part of the party was just the usual, George got drunk off his mind in the first 10 minutes, Kathy and Tyrone got in a fist fight and Kathy won. Then the second half of the party was killer! Rocket Mammal showed up with this sick ass skateboard that had rockets...ROCKETS! Rocket mammal's a perfect name for the guy cause he went soaring, oh man he also had some kind of spray paint or something attached to the back of the skateboard and he sent all these crazy colors flying in the air....”

“Where's the fabbit?”

“Huh?”

“I asked where is he?”, Standford asked with a malicious stare and gritted teeth.

“I saw him go with Cynthia up to the second floor, said something about talking about how he made his rocket...”

Standford's eyes burst into a firery rage, storming off to find Jack and end his miserable and pathetic life once and for all.

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As Jack and Cynthia were walking up the stairs to the second floor, Jack was explaining how he made the infamous skateboard to Cynthia. “So you essentially stayed after school every day and worked on it non-stop and gave favors to the shop and robotics club?”

“Yeaaaaaahhh, I feel like in the next couple days I'll be getting a bunch of phone calls asking me to sabotage another school's robot to disqualify them in an upcoming competition....”, Jack said while rolling his eyes.

“I wouldn't worry, knowing the robotics team they'd be the one trying to hire you. OH! Here it is!”

Jack came upon another large door he heard some talking from the other side but couldn't quite make out who it was, “Why does Mary need to have such large doors? It's not like she's on the tall side being a ferret and all...”

“Her parents have a bunch of tiger butlers, so they need large doors to accommodate for their large size”

“Kinda like Aunt Fru-Fru and Uncle Big with the polar bears”, Jack thought to himself. Letting people know that he had ties to a major crime family would definitely put a red light on he and his family, a secret that both his family and Big's kept fairly close.

“C'mon, let's go inside”

As Cynthia opened the large door and Jack stepped inside and freezed in place at the sight that was in front of him.

“Why don't you tell me more about your power converters?”

“Sure thing there hot tiiiiiiiiii....”

What was in front of him was Steve sitting on a large framed bed, with Stacey Grassly, the lead cheer-leading onyx, straddling on his hips, an action that Jack only assumed meant that they were making out. Jack burst out into laughter and started rolling on the floor laughing at the sight that his friend displayed in front of him.

Steve shot up from the bed in horror, knowing what would ensue if this information left the room. “HHHHEEEEEYYYYY JACK! Stacy here was just wondering about some.... MATH PROBLEMS!! Yeah math problems...”, Steve was visibly sweating from his forehead, a bodily action that caused Jack to laugh harder.

“Riiiiiigggghhhttt... Math problems, bet you were inputing your numbers into her calculator”, He said jokingly while raising both his eyebrows up and down.

Steve gave a heavy sigh and gave up on trying to diffuse his friend's banter, “Just go man.... AND DON'T TELL BRIAN ABOUT THIS!”

Jack merely grinned widely at his friend and walked out of the room with Cynthia, making their way back downstairs. “I guess you never knew your friend could do that huh”, Cynthia asked tentatively.

“It is a bit surprising... however me and Brian don't know a ton about his personal life so I can't really say for myself that I know Steve 100%”

Cynthia looked down to the floor slightly most likely pondering Jack's statement. Jack tried not to look at her too much so he wouldn't want insinuate the possibility that he was another stalker. They made their way to the glass back door, neither paying any attention to each other or the loud party mammals around them. Both looking at the bright stars that showed in the opening of the canopy high up in the trees that looked as if they wanted to consume this whole district.

“Thank you.”

Jack swiveled his head in surprise, seeing Cynthia still staring up into the canopy.

“Excuse me?”

“Thank you.. for an awesome night. If I'm perfectly honest I never liked going to these parties, too loud and too abrasive for my taste. But the show that you put on... gotta admit, makes you one pretty cool dude”, Cynthia said with a sly smirk.

Jack gave a soft laugh at that prospect, for seeing the expression in Cynthia's face made him realize that although he may never be something special to her, he can always be a friend. For him friends have been so few and far between, Brian and Steve have been there since the beginning but even they have their own limitations on how much they could help them. With all that has been going on his life, since the riots that started for learning his existence and birth from the Unity Project, from the Middle School conundrum, to the daily beatings he would receive since he joined the school system, it was always good to have another friend to be there for you.

“Cynthia I...”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY ABOUT THE DELAY!!!!


	6. Chapter 5: Cold and Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The feels hit and the dark gets darker.......

A heavy impact came to the back of Jack's head, a feeling that could only be described for him as if he was hit by a metal bat. However the impact came from a finite area centered on the very back of his head, for a bat would have stretch the width of it.

The next thing he knew he was flying again, but this time the first thing he hit was what he thought was glass, for when he crashed through the solid object shards of reflecting crystals surrounded him in the air, embedding themselves in his fur and skin as if they were parasites wanting to suck the life out of him. For a moment he didn't know pain, he only saw stars of glass and a rotating image of what he believed to be the air. Pain struck at him when he landed on the ground, each shard of glass that attached to him embedded deeper into his skin, causing blood to seep out from the punctured wounds. His head killed him, the impact causing his vision to go fuzzy and making it difficult for him to focus, and there was a constant ringing in his ear that didn't want to go away.

In front of him he saw a blurry figure walk towards him, it was much larger than him and quickly paced itself to make its way towards Jack. Before Jack could respond another blow came to him in the gut. This set him backwards about 20 paces, making him fall over on his back and return his vision to normal and his hearing return somewhat. He tried to stand up but the pain of the glass, the throbbing of his head and now the grueling contraction that came from his abdomen only allowed him to kneel. As he made his way onto his knees he saw who his assailant was, and it was not any surprise to him. Jack saw Standford's face, it showed a variety of emotions that Standford has shown him before, but never all at once. Malice, hate, greed, jealousy, and temptation. What surprised Jack was the fact that Standford would beat him in public, for before he always beat him out of sight of other people, letting them wonder where Jack's black eye came from.

Jack looked behind Standford, he saw Cynthia run out through the crowd that surrounded Jack and Standford's confrontation. The ringing in his ears was still there, but he could see that she was angry at him for something, what were they talking about? Jack made out every word or two, he could only assume that she was mad at Standford for hitting him. As his the ringing faded he heard Standford's last sentence, and that was all Jack needed to hear to get mad.

“YOU ARE WHAT I SAY YOU FUCKING ARE YOU VIXEN WHORE! NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET ME DO MY WORK!”, Standford hit her hard with a closed fist and sent her flying into Martin, who grabbed hold of both her arms. Cynthia looked back at Martin with an intense glare, but the bear's natural size and strength was too much for Cynthia to escape, and the way he secured her made it difficult to retaliate.

Standford looked back to Jack and began to grow a malicious grin on his face and walked towards him, “So the fabbit's finally conscious? Good to hear, I was starting to think I'd be flogging a dead horse, it's no fun when you're unconscious!”. Standford backhanded Jack with his right paw, sending Jack backwards another 10 paces, inching Jack closer and closer to the edge of the pool. Jack tried to speak but ended up coughing a small amount of blood from his mouth, realizing that he was loosing more and more blood as the confrontation progressed.

“JACK!!!”, Jack looked up to see Brian run at full sprint through the crowd. Jack knew that he was going to try to save him from Standford. However Brian was stopped by Connor, for Connor jumped from seemingly out of nowhere and landed a kick into Brian side, knocking the wind out of Brian and toppiling him over into the crowd. Jack wondered where Steve was, whether or not he was still safe inside or somewhere in the crowd it didn't matter, and Jack wasn't willing to get mad at Steve for not helping him. Jack looked back to Standford with a deadpan expression, despite the pain he didn't want to show any weakness to his assailant, cause for all these years... weakness is what has broken Jack.

“Do you remember what I told you fabbit? About getting close to Cynthia? That was one line you already crossed with me in a whole fabric of lines you've crossed, I've been going easy on you all these years, but now you've broken me to the boiling point”, Standford got to Jack and knocked him over onto his back pressing his foot on Jack's chest hard in a display of dominance while also indirectly forcing the shards of glass deeper into his skin.

“You think you can just crawl out of the little hole you've made, safely snug and safe with your precious mommy cop and daddy cop putting riot shields over you to protect you from the big bad world. You wanted to be in a different light didn't you? You wanted to be selfish and bask in the limelight! Well I'll tell you this now!”, Standford put more pressure onto Jack's chest.

“You will never be more than a bottom feeder! A disgusting freak of science that was never meant to be born! You know what you'll be like for the rest of your life? Wondering whether you're predator or prey! Continously searching and searching trying to find out who you are and what you're supposed to be! Well let me answer that question for you fabbit! You'll be nothing! You'll always be at the bottom of the food chain and everyone's punching bag! This city will eat you up and spit out the remains because you'll be nothing more than a FUCKING HALF-BREED!”

Whatever shred of restraint Jack had was lost in the torrent of slurs and insults that vomited out of Standford's muzzle. The epitome of everything he's gone through, every bruise, every cut, every broken bone in his body showed him how long he's been pushed around. And you know what? Jack was done with it......

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Nick Wilde has had his own set of things to deal with, from the death of his mother, the torture he endured from mantler, the Nightshade War... all of those issues were resolved in some shape or some way. The one thing that has never been resolved was his son Jack.

Since Jack was born he's always gotten into trouble, whether it was because of his own curiosity or because people lured him into it. And now he was trying to find his son, after he apparently snuck out the apartment, leaving a decoy in his bed that fooled Judy for about an hour and a half until she actually went to check on him. With that revalation it led to a string of obscenities that even he didn't know his wife could use or understand.

So for the past 40 minutes he has been driving around every district in Zootopia trying to find his mischievous son. Searching every street from Tundra Town to Sahara Square with no sign or clue to where Jack was, with the Rainforest District being his next stop. The radio of his cruiser bleeped, “Officer we have a reported 10-15 in the Rainforest District

“What's the 10-20?”

“49 Olive Road, we're gonna need you as a 10-25, reports of loud music and lots of loud chatter, previous reports have been filed on this place with nearly the exact same people, underage teenage drinking”

Nick thought to himself and thought that there would be a good place to start and possibly end his search for Jack, knowing that his wife was probably pacing the bedroom back home in fear of Jack's personal safety and health.

“Roger that Arnold, I'll report back as soon as I diffuse the situation”

Nick looked out of his cruiser window and saw the city lights shimmer in the night air as he crossed the bridge into the rainforest district. “You better be there Jack... You better be there”

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Jack's teal eyes turned to predatory slits and began growling furiously at Standford, who was still putting immense pressure on his chest. Standford's eyes change from one of dominance and aggression to one of pure fear, a prospect that Jack in his current state enjoyed greatly. To release himself Jack craned his neck forward to the leg that Standford placed upon him and bit his ankle with immense force.

Standford riled backwards in pain, gripping the now bleeding ankle, to regain his balance he firmly placed it back on the ground. Standford looked up from his ankle to see Jack bound into the air and charging straight at him. Standford flew his fist forward to try to knock back Jack but in a miraculous feat of flexibility Jack twirled mid-air around Standford's fist and continued his course towards Standford. Jack pounded onto Standford's muzzle, looking at him with predatory slits that showed no sign of remorse, only the urge to kill. Jack proceeded to unsheathe his claws and dig them deep into Standford's muzzle just below his eyes. Standford howled in pain punching and thrashing at Jack to try to release himself from the grip of death.

Jack grinned at the helplessness and pathetic nature that he put Standford in, and something deep inside of him started to claw out, wanting nothing more than the humiliation and crying pain of Standford only to finally....end him. Jack sunk his claws deeper into Standford's muzzle and started to slide down it, opening up canyons of flesh from below his eyes to the tip of his nose. Standford screamed in pain, grabbing his snout in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. Jack re-positioned himself on all fours, growling wildly at Standford.

Jack paused momentarily, seeing the river of blood that was coming from Standford's protrusion which set his own blood on fire. His vision became blurry and a malicious grin formed on Jack's muzzle, this time Jack was the predator and Standford was his prey.

Jack pounced at Standford once again, this time sprinting on all fours at full speed, to then jump and ram his head underneath Standford's chin, sending the wolf 5 paces backwards and knocking him on his back. Standford groaned in pain from the initial impact and tried desperately to get up, however he was cut short with Jack smashing his foot onto Standford's throat. Standford looked up in horror as Jack stood on his hind legs, hatred and vengeance filling his eyes. Jack reared his right paw, claws unsheathed, ready to strike down and end Standford once and for all. Jack's vision was blurry, but in that moment the darkness that resided in Jack was released, years of torment accumulating into a cancer that spread through him over the years, with today being the catalyst. It would be over, just one strike, just one claw to the throat, and it would all be over.....

 

“ **JAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKK**!!!!!!”

 

Jack's vision became clear and he swiveled his head towards the familiar voice. His father stood in a part in the crowd, fully dressed in his police uniform. Nick's face showed horror and surprise as he witnessed the position that his son was in. His little kit, his little Jacky, gone was the small cute teal eyes that stared at him in the delivery room, in were the quivering black slits that wanted desperately to consume him.

Jack's ears flopped to the back of his head. He looked down at Stanford to see a pool of blood forming on ground beneath Standford's head. It acted as mirror to show what Jack was starting to become, seeing the quivering slits that formed in his eyes and the bared teeth that formed around his mouth. Jack started to shake, and he when he looked down his breathing began to increase rapidly. Seeing his claws stained with Standford's blood and seeing him lying there on the ground bleeding slowly, as well as the blood that poured from his arms from the cuts that he received from the glass that embedded into his skin.

His breath quickened and deepened, he put both paws on top of his head in fright and anxiety and he looked up from Standford's body and he looked into the crowd that surrounded him. All of them stared at him in fear and disgust, mouths parted slightly at the horror that was displayed in front of them. He looked to Brian who showed a face not of fear but of surprise and shock. He looked to Cynthia, who shook in fear at the brutality of both Standford and Jack. Jack looked back to his father, tears forming in Jack's eyes as he backed away slowly from everyone.

“Jack! Don't move you're gonna be alright please... don't go this time...”, Nick pleaded.

Jack opened and closed his mouth trying desperately to speak, but more tears flowed freely from his eyes, consuming whatever words were trying to form in his mind. Jack took off in a sprint, rushing past the pool and the crowd to jump over the fence and run as far as he could.

“JAAACK!!!!”, Nick yelled to his son. Unable to catch up to him Nick turned to the crowd that stood behind him, glaring at each and every one of the teenagers. “ALRIGHT I WANT THIS FUCKING PLACE SHUT DOWN!!! Get out and call your parents and let them know where you are!”, Nick pulled out his radio, “All units available we have a 10-52, teenager in need of emergency care, also have a possible 10-80 needed, 10-20 is 49 Olive Road Rainforest District”. Nick looked to where his son ran to, “God Jack..... stay safe..... daddy's gonna take you home... I promise”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank everyone who has left a kudo and comment on this story! It has progressed a good portion, but we still have a long way to go!!!!


	7. Chapter 6: Cold, Dark, Distraught, but Forgiven

Jack didn't know where he was going, he didn't know where he was, all he knew was that it hurt both inside and out. The mist pouring in his face like a blanket that covered his vision, keeping him from seeing where he was going. At this point however, Jack didn't care. He only knew he was hated, from now till eternity he knew where his life would go, to a black abyss where there is no escape and no one there to comfort you.

He felt hot, he felt blood, he felt pain...... he felt cold? Jack could feel snow falling on his fur, melting away as it came in contact with him. Easing the pain slightly on each of his cuts, still feeling the streams wash down his arms and legs. His head killed, he wasn't sure how long he could run for, but he didn't care, he just wanted to keep running. He wanted to run and scream to the ends of the Earth, and even then he wanted to keep running.

“I'm not like them.... I'm not like them.....”, Jack said through streams of tears. His vision blurry and incoherent with the rest of the world, unsure where he is, only knowing the cold that surrounds him.

As Jack continued in his sprint he tripped and fell. He didn't just fall over and hit the ground, he stayed in the air, or at least he thought he did. He didn't know how long he was falling for, it could have been seconds, minutes, hours, Jack couldn't tell. That was until he hit the ground, striking him back to reality. He struggled to lift himself up, his arms shaking from the loss blood and impact, to his relief a fresh layer of snow covered the sidewalk beneath him. Jack turned onto his back breathing heavily to see where he fell from. He laughed at how short the fall was, 10 maybe 15 feet, he honestly couldn't tell.

Jack shivered at the cold, with nothing but a torn up t-shirt and cargo shorts to protect him. Nick stood up with all the strength he had, gripping his right arm in pain and began limping to the nearest light-post. When he arrived and leaned against it and slid down onto his rear, slowly bringing his knees to his chest and tilting his head into himself. Jack started to remember something, something that he forgot long ago. When he was young and his family was together, before he knew how cruel the world could be. His tears welled up again, with remnants freezing over his fur.

“I'm sorry..... I'm sorry........ Don't go.... Don't go......”

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“You know that party would have gone better if you didn't drink as much as you did...”

“Sorry I can't help it, Sarah's margaritas are a guilty pleasure for me”

Penny was in the passenger seat of her boyfriend Scott's car. They recently came back from a party in Sahara Square that turned a little south after Penny had too much to drink, with Scott having to carry her from the party to the car (which just so happened to be 12 blocks away from the party).

“Ugghhh... My masquera got ruined again, could you pass me my make-up remover?”

“Babe I can't I'm kinda struggling with the wheel, they must have cranked down the temperature at the climate control center and the roads are really icey”

Penny rolled her eyes and grabbed her purse from the back seat, she flipped down the front seat mirror to assess the damage done to her masquera. Penny's fur has darkened somewhat over the years, from a grayish-white fur coloring to when she was a child to a more brownish-white coloration, somehow matching well with her Sea Spray colored eyes. As she got older the fur on her cheeks becoming increasingly pointed at the bottom, coming down the sides in an almost beard-like fashion. Despite her fur coloration, pointed cheek fur, and the shorter than average tail she looked mostly like a snow leopard. Truth be told it never really bothered her that much, unless someone would point it out in a demeaning manner, which has happened to her more than a few times in her life.

She looked to Scott, he was a Cougar that worked out of Tundra Town, he and Penny met out of an internship for the Tundra-Town art gallery. Scott wanted to be an art collector and Penny wanted to be an artist so they were able to put two and two together.

“By the way I forgot to ask earlier, have you called your parents recently? I know you guys had that argument a while back but.....”, Scott said awkwardly.

Penny furrowed her brow and gave a sideways glance to Scott, who merely rolled his eyes in frustration. “You know the more you put that conversation off the worse it's gonna get...”

“I know I know..... it's not my fault that they think trying to follow my dream is a stupid idea”

“They're just worried about your personal safety, my parents are the same way, they don't want you interning at a company that they've never heard of”

“The Morrison Art Gallery is more than just well-known, at least in the art world... my parents would never understand that even if it hit them in the.....”

Penny stopped her train of thought short as she noticed a somewhat small but familiar grey figure collapsed next to a light post supposedly unconscious.

 

“SCOTT STOP THE CAR!!!!”

 

Scott slammed on the brakes of his car sending it skidding a few feet until coming to a complete halt. Penny jumped out of the car and ran to the unconscious body. She flipped over the body to reveal that it was Jack, lying unconscious on the sidewalk under the light of the lamp post. She lifted him under his back to hear whether or not he was still breathing, “Oh thank god.....”

“Is that Jack?”, Scott asked worryingly.

“Yes it is, we need to get him to a hospital!”

“What's wrong with him?”, Scott asked while leaning over Penny's shoulder to check up on Jack.

Jack was covered in snow, with patches of his fur being frozen over most likely from being in the cold for too long. He had cuts all over his body with pieces of jagged glass poking out on random points on his body. Blood was still leaking slowly from the points of impact.

“God Jack what happened to you?”, Penny asked in a hushed tone.

“We need to call an ambulance...”

Penny turned to face her boyfriend, “I don't think Jack has enough time for an ambulance! By the time they'll get here he'll be dead! We're driving him to the hospital!”

“But the nearest hospital is a 20 minutes drive from here!”

“Then we'll just have to drive faster than usual... C'MON!”

Penny picked up Jack who was easy to carry thanks to his smaller size. She rushed into the car getting into the backseat next to Jack, turning up the heating of the car to its maximum temperature. “Hang in there little bro.... help's on the way...”

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Penny. Jack could hear Penny's voice, but he wasn't sure if it was actually her. In intervals his eyes would part open and then close again. First, he was in a car with Penny yelling at him, then he was in a wheelchair, then he was being catered in an emergency bed with doctors all around him, then nothing. Jack then saw himself standing in a world of white, nothing there but an infinitely expanding whiteness. In front of him he saw a figure, it looked like an elderly vixen, and for some reason she looked a lot like his dad.

“It's not your time yet Jack... Not for a very long time. You have your whole life ahead of you and so much more”

The Vixen walked up to him and hugged Jack tight, “And tell that smug father of yours that I said hello to my little Tod. And that sweet mother of yours as well... give her all of my love, for raising such a wonderful family”.

The vixen faded away and darkness en-clouded the white.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jack opened his eyes slowly, his was head still groggy from what he assumed was a long sleep. He looked around and noticed that he was now in a hospital, plus something was tugging at the back of his mind. “I feel like I'm forgetting something....”, Jack thought back, maybe it was a dream he had? Something about a tod and his mom but he honestly couldn't remember. He studied himself for a moment to get a sense of what his situation was.

Jack was in a hospital gown, and other than that he was completely indecent. He had bandages wrapped around both of his arms and from what he could feel he was wrapped around the chest area as well. He had IV tubes sticking out of his right arm, he also felt surprisingly warm, noticing that the blanket that was covering him was heated. To his relief he didn't look too banged up, despite the beating that he got from Standford at the party..... the party.

Jack leaned his head back and sighed, he almost forgot about the party. He wondered how long he's been out for, what's happened since then, was Brian okay? What happened to Steve? Did Standford die from his wounds? Cynthia...... Jack closed his eyes and imagined what would happen if he ever came across Cynthia, he thought through about 9 different scenarios through his head and none of them came out well. One would involve her kicking him in the nuts, backing away in fear for her safety, and many others.

Jack looked around the room to see that he was in a specialized room for mammals of smaller size, besides the hospital bed that he was in the room itself wasn't too bad. To the left of him he noticed that the window was open and the sun was high in the sky, guessing that it was probably early or mid-afternoon. On the window cill there were at least 2 bouquets of flowers, both had open cards that Jack was able to see who it was from, one was clearly from Brian and Steve, both recognizing their stupid signatures on the card. The other he guessed was from his Aunt Fru-Fru, due to the massive nature of the bouquet. In front of the bed were a pair of chairs probably meant for visitors. Above that were whiteboards with a bunch of writing on it more likely than not talking about Jack. Finally in the center of the wall there was a ridiculous poster saying “Hang in There” with a sloth on it goofily smiling at Jack as if to taunt him.

Jack was about to get up from his hospital bed until he picked up conversation in the hallway that seemed to get louder and louder as they came closer to his room. Within a few seconds the door opened to reveal his mom and dad enter the room.

“I just can't stand the fact that we can't agree on what... we... should...... do......”

His mother's eyes grew to saucers, with her father's eyes mimicking the action. Both parents stood in the doorway in silence while Jack sat on the hospital bed with his ears flopped down in preparation of what he expected to follow after the silence was broken. Jack sterned himself and broke the silence himself.

“Now I know what you guys are going to say.... I messed up... I broke your trust....”, Jack started to cry, “I'm a disappointment... I always have been..... and now I know why those people wanted me put down and after what I've down, maybe I do deserve...”

Jack was interrupted by his mom and dad. While Jack cried to himself, they made their way to the bed and embraced their distraught son. A feeling that every teenager secretly longs for, from the time they were a kit they always wanted one thing.... Acceptance. And the hug that his mom and dad gave him, with his dad to his right and his mom on his left, he didn't just feel accepted... he felted loved. A feeling that he always seemed to forget. Jack tears were flowing freely now, for deep down all he wanted to do was cry forever, let all of his sadness flow out of him until he dried out like a desert.

“We've always been proud of you Jack.... Don't you ever forget that”, Judy said with a hushed tone.

“You think you have to fight this fight alone Jack? We'll always be there for you little dude... always...”

Jack smiled behind watery eyes, “I'm sorry.....”

“No need to apologize there kiddo, trust me I know better than anyone what'll happen when you let your instincts run wild”, Nick said with a caring grin.

“What happened after I left the party?”

Nick told the whole story to Jack. For after Jack ran away at least 5 other officers were called in to clean up the whole mess. Nick was in charge of calling each of the party attendee's parents and let them know where they were. It took about 2 hours to confiscate all of the alcohol that was in the house.

“You should have seen some of the parents that showed up to pick up their kids! The looks on their faces were priceless! One mother looked like a cherry bomb ready to explode!”, Nick laughed at the memory of expressions that the many parents presented to him.

“What happened to Standford?”, Jack asked nervously.

“You don't have to worry about your friend..”, Jack glared at his dad, “Sorry, sorry just tryin' to make a joke... anyway he was put into emergency care. Despite the fact that he was bleeding so much he was lucky cause of how finely pointed your claws are, cause if your claws were jagged and unkempt it would have been next to impossible to sew his face back together. So he was released two days ago with over 200 stitches, but other than that he's juuuussstt peachy...”

Jack pondered at the thought of Standford, wondering what Standford would look like with 200 stitches. Would he look more like a poorly wrapped mummy or Frankenstein's girlfriend? Jack however switched his thoughts to something else, "By the way..."

“I know you're probably wondering if you're trouble for this...”, his mom paused for dramatic effect but all it did was make the situation more awkward than it already was, “You aren't”

Jack raised both of his eyebrows in shock, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M NOT IN TROUBLE??????”

Judy and Nick looked at each other and started laughing outrageously. Jack furrowed his brow at the fact that they were messing with him, but he was never too sure.

“You are still grounded forever, however Brian told me the whole story about how Standford punched you through a glass window, punched you in the gut and then stepped on you like a bug”, Jack was surprised about how much information that his mother was able to extract from Brian, for Jack knew Brian was never one to tattle on anyone, even Standford.

“There are a few things I would like clarify from you...”, Judy's expression sterned and Jack became increasingly nervous, “1. Why didn't you tell about this Standford character before, 2. From what Brian told me he's done a serious amount of crimes not only against you but also against most of the populace of the school and finally 3......... why didn't you tell me that you were invited by a girl”, Judy gave an extremely smug look to her teenage kit.

Jack's face blushed immensly at the revelation that his parents discovered the reason why he went to the party in the first place. “So what? It was just some girl that was a fan of the video nothing more..... shut up.....”, Jack pouted his lips, and in response both his parents gave a big aaaawwwww to his demeanor, a response that Jack did not take lightly.

“You're so....”, his mother began.

“Don't you say it!”

“Absolutely”

“Don't you do it!”

“positively”

“I MEAN IT!”

“Adowable!!!”

Judy hugged her son jokingly as her son gave her a look of malice and frustration. “You know I HATE being called that!”

“C'mon kiddo, you're still part bunny so you're still fair game”, Nick said with a coy grin.

Jack couldn't help but laugh a little, for for the first time in years.... he felt like he was a part of family again.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys if the story feels a bit slow, I wanted to take the first few chapters of the series to progress and introduce the characters in a meaningful way. Once again I would like to thank all who have left kudos and comments on my work! New chapters coming soon.


	8. Chapter 7: Darkness Rising

It was late, 1:30 if Jack was correct. For most of the day now he was catching up with his mom and dad about how everything was going down in Precinct 1, what happened to Penny, the usual boring conversations. He also spent a lengthy 1 hour conversation with his Grandparents over MuzzleTime, Stu and Bonnie Hopps, a conversation that was pretty one sided to say the least. With his grandparents reprimanding him for 95% of the conversation. Now with his parents gone and him more likely than not being the only patient awake at this hour, he set up a Discord call with Brian and Steve on the hospital's monitor to see what was going on on their end.

“Good to hear there was nothing permanent, from the beating you got I'm surprised you can still move your arms”, Brian said sarcastically.

“You don't have to worry about your fearless leader anymore lieutenant Brian. But on a serious note, I still can't believe that I've been out for five days, two days work of homework I'm gonna have to make up. Anyhoo, what's the word been at Alcattraz?”

“Everybody's been pretty quiet about the party the past few days, you may hear a few tid-bits here and there but other than that it's become a pretty touchy subject with everyone. ESPECIALLY around Standford, the first day he came back from school he looked like he was going to kill everyone in the building. Word is that he hasn't spoken to anyone, but there are rumors surfacing that while he's in the locker room alone, he'll be punching the lockers and screaming behind his bandages”, Steve chimed in.

Jack thought about what that scenario would look like, Standford punching the lockers in savage fury, ruing the day that he ever put his hand on Jack. Jack was pleased somewhat by the prospect of him getting the better of Standford. He got his “just deserts” after-all.

“By the way Steve, you have some details that need spilling...”, Jack leaned closer to the screen in front of him with a half-lidded stare and a coy grin. Steve recoiled slightly from his side of the screen, giving Jack a cocked eyebrow to boot.

“Nothing happened at all..... when the cops showed up we made our goodbyes and we haven't spoken to each other since...”

“He took her home and they banged all night”, Brian added.

Steve glared at Brian, “You know there's such thing as subtlety? Maybe you should look up the word sometime.... it could save your life in the future”, Steve said in an increasingly threatening tone. Brian rolled his eyes at Steve's empty threat.

“So..... just food for thought...... what happened to Cynthia?”, Jack asked nervously.

Steve and Brian looked at their own repsective screens awkwardly, with Brian rubbing the back of his neck with his paw and Steve seemingly distracted by something other than Jack. Jack narrowed his eyelids at both of them, he sighed, “If you guys don't give the god's honest answer within the next 15 seconds I will post that picture of you two naked from 9th grade all over the internet.... I have that photo in a special folder called “Black Mail”, reserved for special occasions just like this.... don't try and call my bluff...”, Jack glared into the screen expecting their answer while counting the seconds in his head. Both of his friends knew how determined he was, with Steve finally succumbed first and spilling the first half of the figurative beans.

“All right.... truth be told she has been in school the past couple of days... however she's been acting a bit..... weird....”

Jack raised his eyebrows and gestured to Steve to continue but Brian took the mantle upon himself.

“She's been completely stoned out. Hasn't said a word to anyone or anything the past couple of days. I tried talking to her in the hallway one time but she walked straight past me, didn't say a word or make a noise, if my ears weren't as good as they are I would've sworn she wasn't breathing. But there is one other thing.... when she walked past me I noticed something under her shirt”, Jack glared at Brian, “Relax man, even if I was straight I wouldn't tread that way, but back to the main point, I saw that under her fur just at the base of her shoulders...”, Brian pointed to the area in between the Cervical Vertebrae and the Thoracic Vertebrae, an area that would be barely noticeable if someone wore a shirt over it, “... she was black and blue...”

Jack became nervous at the big reveal. Jack didn't know much about Cynthia's private life, in fact he didn't know anything about her at all personally. “maybe it's an after bruise from the party, Standford hit her pretty hard.... plus Martin might have gotten a hit or two on her while he held her”

Brian shook his head, “From what I saw, Cynthia gave him bruises and not the other way around, but there was something else....”

“UUUURRRGHhhhhh......”

Jack jumped in his bed, going onto all fours in a defensive position. His eyes locked onto his hospital room door. Whatever that sound was... it wasn't from any of the patients.

“Dude what's wrong?”, Brian asked in a nervous manner.

“I'm gonna have to call you guys back.......”, Jack turned off the monitor as quickly and as quietly as he could. Jack then shut off all of the lights in his room, hoping that whatever it was would just leave him alone. Thankfully his eyes were good in the dark, and there was just enough light in the hallway to help Jack determine if anyone was standing outside.

Jack became accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the hospital... but this was... unnerving. Silence engulfed the entire hospital, not a single creature was stirring... not even a mouse. Jack started to shake, for he hated silence more than anything else.

Tap tap tap tap.....

Jack froze, the realization that those footsteps were coming towards his door filled him with a sense of dread. Unfreezing himself from a terrified state Jack frantically looked around the room for a place to hide. Closet? Too cliche. Under the bed? Too obvious. It struck Jack to take a different approach. Jack unsheathed his claws and began climbing his hospital room walls, sinking his claws deep into the walls. When he approached the ceiling he slowly moved one of the mineral fiber squares as quickly as possible, moving upwards in the inner workings of pipes and wires that encompassed the area Jack was in.

Not wanting to make anymore noise Jack stayed in his position, angled just enough to be able to see into his hospital room through a small seem in the ceiling square. The door to his hospital room opened slowly, making almost no noise whatsoever. Jack could just barely make out the figure that walked into the room.

It was around fox height, however that was all that Jack could decipher. For the entirety of his body was covered in some kind of armor plating. Completely black and sleek in design, armor plates that covered his arms, shoulders, chest, knees, and elbows, and the areas that weren't covered by armor were covered in some kind of pure black, leathery looking material. His tail was hidden as well, for Jack could not see or make out what kind of tail he had, if he had one at all. The most disturbing part of the figure was his face, well... if you could call it a face. He wore a metal mask that covered the front and back of his head, completely smoothed out with only small divits that Jack suspected were eye-slits. The creepiest part about the mask was that there was a design on the front of the mask, a contorted grin most likely spray painted on, with jagged and mangled teeth of a savage mammal.

The figure scanned the room, the motion of the character's head was strange, almost in a robotic like fashion. Jack seemed cursious about the figure until its gaze came upon the wall.

“Found you”, the figure said in a metallic voice.

Jack's heart lept into his throat, realizing that his claws made more than noticeable marks on the wall. Jack didn't waste time, he started in a sprint on all fours through the ceiling works, panicking internally and not caring how much sound he made. Without looking back he made his way through the maze of pipes that surrounded him. Every survival instinct in his body told him to run, for he knew that whatever that mammal was... he was no Standford. Clouded by fear and his own thoughts Jack forgot his footing and fell through one of the squares.

Jack landed hard, unsure where he was and didn't quite care. He was sure his pursuers would try to....

Jack nearly vomitted in his mouth, for what lay right in front of him was one of the nurses... dead. No cuts or bruises, just that her head was positioned facing away fron her front, with protrusions of bone jutting out from under her skin, her eyes rolled to the back of her head with veins jutting out from the white of her eyes. Jack started to hyperventilate, sure he's seen his fair share of dead bodies in the movies but never...ever has he seen one in real life. Jack did his best to stand up but his body refused to stop shaking at the sight of the dead body. At least Jack now knew where that sound came from. Jack slapped himself in the face to regain his bearings, he frantically searched around the room for anything that would be useful. Until a blessing came upon him.

“PHONE”, he yelled to himself.

He clambered up the large chair that was clearly meant for larger mammals and scurried over to the phone. Despite its large size Jack was able to pick it up with some effort and dial 911.

The phone began to ring, Jack thumped his foot as quietly and as nervously as he could, still unsure whether or not his pursuer followed him through the ceiling works. The line clicked.

“911 what's your emergency?”

Jack lost it, “I'm at Zootopia general hospital on the second floor and there is a fucking murderous psychopath out to get me..”

“I'm sorry sir we're going to need you to calm down”

“FUCK CALMING DOWN??????!!! I HAVE A FUCKING SERIAL KILLER AFTER ME AND I AM STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO A DEAD FUCKING BODY!!! YOU NEED TO SEND EVERY POLICE OFFICER AVAILABLE BECAUSE...”, Jack looked up from the phone. There was another one.....

This one was much larger, at least tiger or lion height, wearing an identical set of armor and clothes with the same indistinguishable parts and features as his first pursuer. Jack froze in place again.

“Butter Biscuits.....”

Without any warning the large figure attacked, jumping without making a growl or sound. Jack jumped from the phone and off of the desk, barely dodging the masked figure's attack as it seemingly vaulted in thin air to pounce on Jack. Through shear luck Jack managed to leave out the door his assailant came through. Without any second thought Jack sprinted in down the hallway hoping to escape through the stairs. Just as Jack was about to turn the corner, the smaller figure seemingly phased into image, standing mere inches away from Jack's face.

“He demands that you come with us... willingly or not Mr. Wilde...”, The figure reached out and grabbed Jack's throat, squeezing it harder and harder. Jack's mind raced with thoughts as he tried his best to breathe. Jack took his free paw and slashed just at the neck region where the mask/helmet was not protecting it. The figure recoiled, gripping the now bleeding wound, Jack took notice that the fur that protruded from under the suit layer was white, black, and grey as he ran for the next hall.

Jack continued down the hallway, thinking of every possible hiding place that he could think of. Until he found the most off-putting and unlikely spot imaginable. “Couldn't hurt”, Jack jumped into the massive trash can to the right of the hallway, closing the lid on top of him and staying as silent as possible. The smell was unbearable, unintentionally making Jack begin to hurl in his mouth, however he knew that the disgusting smell would throw off his attackers. He heard footsteps coming in his direction. Jack stilled himself to the point he was barely breathing.

“We need to find him and fast”, said a low but gruff voice.

“There's something wrong with your voice modifier, we need to get that fixed immediately”, said a more metallic and deadpan voice.

“The Mantle must have clipped one of the internal wires, it won't matter if we are able to find him... Can you smell him at all”

A sniffing noise came from what Jack believed to be the taller of the two, “No I can't, he must have hidden himself in an area around here that blocks the smell”

“It is a hospital, there are smells everywhere, none of them pleasant”

“Well we won't be able to track him by smell if we leave the bodies unattended, we must not leave any loose ends”

In the distance Jack heard something that was like a call from god, “Sirens”, Jack thought to himself. His call had gone through and thankfully the mammal on the other end of the line sent back-up to assess the scene.

“We need to go now. The Mantle has called for the police”

“We cannot just leave him here he may expose us!”

“They will find no actual proof, besides, he says that the time is close that we reveal ourselves. But for now, we must go”

Jack heard paws padding against the tiles of the hall as well as something strange creaking noises. Unwilling and too afraid to leave his trashy hiding spot jack remained until he knew it was all clear. Jack heard the ding of the elevator and his spirits lifted.

“All right let's check out this... oh my god”, Jack could hear convulsing sounds coming from what he assumed were officers. Jack jumped out of the trash can and sprinted to the familiar voice. “UNCLE WOLFORD!!!”

Jack careened around the corner to see Officer Wolford and his Moose Partner crouching over another dead body. Wolford swiveled to face Jack and his expression turned from disgust to worry.

“Jack what the fuck happened her and what the fuck happened to you? And why do you smell like garbage”

Jack looked at his Uncle with nervous eyes, “I have no idea......”

********************************

Around 1 hour later the entire hospital floor was swarming with police officers, forensics was also brought in due to the high number of dead bodies found in the hospital, the total count coming to 10. Jack sat back in his hospital room, now changed into actual clothes, a ZPD training t-shirt and sweatpants provided by his mother and father. He sat there pondering, his right hand shaking unconsciously. What scared him the most wasn't the dead body, despite the horrific image it displayed in his mind. It was the mysteriousness of the two that attacked him. Why did they want him? Why were they willing to kill the nurses to get to him? What were they after? And who were they? Jack's mind raced with paranoid thoughts and questions on whether or not they would come back.

“You feeling okay buddy?”, Jack looked up to see his father Nick, putting a hand on his shoulder and giving a worried and caring stare

“Yeah.... I'm fine..... Just shaken a bit...”

Nick gave a small dry laugh, “Seeing a dead body is never an easy thing Jack, especially one as violent as this...”

“Have they gotten a hold of the cameras yet?”

“Your mom's working on it now, she told me to tell you that you and I'd be the first to know once they got a hold of it”

Jack looked down at the floor and pondered, “I'm not a cop though... wouldn't it be against the law for me to witness the evidence?”

Nick shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, “You are considered the victim of the crime, so you have the right to have access and witness evidence, not only to help the investigation but also and most importantly, anyone who messes with my son is going to get a serious beating in the nether regions. So don't worry once we get a image of these guys, they'll be sorry they messed with the Wilde family.”

Jack laughed at his dad's statement, Jack never saw his dad as the fighting type, not only from knowing him his whole life but also the many stories that his mom would tell him about when Nick was in training camp. Apparently during sparring matches when he was in the police academy he wouldn't even hit his opponent, just dance around the whole ring until they got tired.

As father and son laughed together they were interrupted by the presence of a very worried mother bunny. Jack was suprised by his mother's appearance, for she looked exhausted, with dark circles surrounding her eyes and her fur matted out of place while in her police uniform

“So mom, I hear the Talking Dead are hiring new actors since Glenn Rhino died, you look like you'd make a great addition to the cast”, Jack said jokingly.

His mother smiled happily, “Good to see you're trying to keep spirits up Jack”, Judy's expression turned more solemn, “I should have stayed here with you.... I should have been here and yet I saw my job as more important as my own son....”

Nick began to comfort his wife however Jack stepped in, “Mom.... there was nothing you could've done. No one knew these freaks were coming not even me and I certainty have no idea why they came here looking for me. You can't keep blaming yourself for everything that happens to me mom, you can't control everything. I know how to take care of myself”

Judy solemnly paused at the thought of that, thinking of the conversation that she and Nick had in the cruiser “We're not going to be able to protect him forever” was what he said. Judy looked to her son who was intently staring at her, his expression stating that none of this was her fault... but she couldn't shake the feeling that she could have done something.

“Alright... But I did wanted to tell you two that we got a hold of the camera footage, we haven't looked at it yet so I would highly recommend that you get your butts into the security room”

The room was small, with only one desk in the center of the room, however lacing the whole front wall was a huge array of cameras that connected to every room in the hotel, all connected to a single mainframe. At the desk sat Barry Stanton, a mole that worked in computer forensics that was always brought in to handle any technological pieces of a case.

“So Barry, what do ya got for us?”, Nick asked tentatively.

“Well something that none of you will particularly like, give me second”

Soon enough all of the screens on the wall were set to the camera record of Jack's attack, showing the instance in which Jack was being choked by the mysterious figure. Except there was one thing missing.... there was no one there. In the frame it showed Jack gasping and wheezing for air, his face turning blue from the lack of oxygen however his assailant was nowhere on the screen. Completely invisible to the camera with no indication that it was ever there. Jack twitched at the discovery and began to fume.

“WHAT THE CHERRY PICKING PIE IS THAT????”

“Well it's the recording from earlier...”

“I KNOW WHAT IT IS! I'm just a bit frustrated at the fact that there is no one else on the screen other than me!!!!! Was the footage altered in any way?”

“No it wasn't, if the footage was altered they would have left some form of a bread-crumb trail or indicator that they edited the footage. For the operating system that this hospital runs on keeps records and ghost files on whether or not the system was altered. Meaning that even if they used the administrator access code to change the footage the system still would have taken a record of that alteration”

Jack looked to his parents who were both looking at him with concerned eyes, eyes that were wondering whether or not the attack was done by outside forces or by their own son. Jack was about to begin a tyraid in his defense however his dad intervened.

“Before you say anything kitto, no we don't think you did any of this and yes we do believe that you were attacked...”

Judy continued her husband's thought, “..however we cannot rule out any factors yet, not only because this investigation is brand new but also to collect as much evidence as we can to make sure we do not leave any stones unturned, and once we finalize that you were attacked and that you didn't do this yourself THEN we can rule you out as a suspect”

Jack never cared for standard police procedure, 1. because they were boring and 2. they even made the victims look like assholes. Deep down he knew both his parents and all officers present knew he wasn't responsible, but until proper evidence was presented.. Jack couldn't do anything.

“So what now?”

Nick and Judy looked at each other, “We're taking you home”, they said simultaneously.

Jack raised his eyebrow, “Wait... why am I going home? If I'm a suspect then shouldn't I be taken into custody and all that jazz?”

“Well technically since both of your parents just so happen to be police officers you are technically in police custody... but I mean we can do it the regular way if you want where we stick you in an interrogation room for 9 hours a day and then once that's done we lock you in one of the holding cells...”, Nick said with his signature half-lidded eyes and coy grin.

Jack immediately responded, “On second thought HOME CUSTODY IT IS!!!”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the hunt begin........


	9. Chapter 8: Facing Demons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY ABOUT THE DELAY GUYS!!! I know it's been a few weeks since the last time I posted the latest chapter but school has been a you-know-what and now I've finally been able to get back to work on the Apex Circle series. I'll hopefully be able to post another chapter soon so look out for that! (FYI, there will be a few details at the end of the chapter)

Throughout that night Jack spent hours on his living room couch with his mom and dad answering questions about the attack. General procedure questions such as, “When did this happen?”, “What happened exactly?”, “What did the attackers look like?”. Jack was exhausted not only from the terrifying experience that occurred only hours ago but also the torrent of questions that he received from his mom. Despite being part bunny much of his energy was usually spent by late evening. During the whole ordeal his dad was grinning stupidly, reveling in his son's annoyance.

The next morning Jack was woken up quite early, with the usual morning routine of his dad's not-so-graceful entrance.

“Rise and shine ya little rebel! Time to hit the books once again from now until you graduate and there will be as of now..... nothing but books and worms!!!!”, Nick said over-enthusiastically.

Jack moaned loudly, “Why do I have to be in school? Shouldn't I be under police custody... so let me sleep for another 5 hours......”

Nick wasted no time, reaching under the covers, grabbing his son's tail and pulling him off the bed. Jack landed with a loud thud, covers wrapped around him like an akward burrito. Jack looked up, vision still fuzzy from the lack of sleep.

“Well for one thing you've already missed two days of school, secondly if those nut jobs were to come for you again, the safest place to be would be in a public settng. And it was by the direct order of your mother that you also be placed under police protection while you're in school”

Jack shot up from his downed state, “YOU WHAT????!!!!” Nick recoiled slightly by Jack's burst of energy, throwing up his hands in defense. “Jack... We can't take anymore risks with your safety, although the extra protection may seem a bit much, but it is a risk that your mother and I are willing to take...”

Jack began to fume, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Listen I can understand that you guys wanna keep me safe but this is OVERKILL! I'm already probably the most hated and feared kit in school after what I did to Standford, plus all of the teachers there have put me on their Red Flag list! The reasons for the protection won't matter cause not only will it ruin my reputation with the other kits at school but also pseudo-legitimize the teacher's suspicions that I'm a WANTED CRIMINAL!”

Nick's expression sterned, showing both anger and frustration, something that Jack has never seen before in his life, “You are going to school, and you will go with the officers, no buts, nuts, or coconuts..."

Jack clenched his paws, “I am not doing ANYTHING...”

“YOU ARE GOING...NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Jack recoiled from his father's outburst. Never in his life has he seen such anger from his father, sure he was used to his mother's outburst they were never few and far between, his father however... he was a different story. Throughout his life Jack always knew his father as calm and collected, never over-reacting and never jumping in without thinking, he was always the one to cool his mom down whenever she'd go into her psycho-bunny mode.

Nick sighed heavily at his son's response, “I'm sorry Jack, but I can't be easy on you now... sometimes I have to be the bad guy every once in a while... even when I'm doing the right thing”

Jack stood there silently, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts glaring at his father. Jack knew that he was never going to win this arguement, even if his explaination was on point, because when it comes to parents... they always win.

“Fine... I'll go, but I'm just letting you know now..... I'm not happy..... not one bit”

************************

The ride with the Wilde family was silent, not a whisper was uttered within the confines of the cruiser. Judy was in the driver's seat, occasionally looking back to check up on Jack behind the grates that separated the front and back seat while Nick sat in the same position the whole ride, arms crossed and face sterned, never looking at his wife or son. Jack looked out the window from the back seat, lost in a torrent of thoughts and negative emotions, wondering what would happen when he went back to school. With him being gone for over 5 days things must have changed, maybe people have forgotten about the party and the fight or maybe they haven't let go of anything, it was always hard to tell when it came to the mob mentality of school.

As the cruiser approached the school Jack's neck fur began to stand on end, he always grew nervous when he drew close to the school but today was different, like a sixth sense telling him that there was danger close by. The cruiser came to a complete stop, Jack's signal to get out and get into school. As Jack opened the driver's side back seat door his mom interrupted his flow.

“Have a good day honey...”, she said with a small smile.

Jack looked to his mother, faced still sterned with frustration, “Doubt it”. Jack slammed the car door and walked out to see two officers standing in front of him. One was Jefforey Frankcastle, a Moose that recently joined the force about 10 months back, and on Jefforey's shoulder was Darold Shriver, a pine martin that's been a part of the force for at least 3 years. Jack didn't know either of them well, but Jack knew he had to try his best not to piss them off.

“Hiya fellas...”, Jack greeted unenthusiastically.

“C'mon kit let's get this over with, don't wanna be late for do ya?”, Jefforey asked annoyingly.

Jack looked up to the large mammal, “Yeah, can't wait to start another day in sunnyside Precinct 1 High....”

The three mammals began their walk to the front door of Precinct 1 high, despite the walkway being only about 20 yards long, it felt to Jack as if he had been walking for miles. He felt a dark cloud surround him, every instinct in his body was telling him that this was a bad idea, not knowing if there was true danger lurking in his school or maybe the little kit inside of him was afraid to see the many faces of anger and hatred that awaited him. Jack came upon the large grey metal doors and stared at them, “They look larger than usual today”, Jack thought to himself. Jack breathed heavily, knowing that this time... there would be no happy welcome party. With a heavy heart Jack entered the halls of his school, his prison, his enemy, his death.

As Jack walked through the hallways of his school many of the regular conversations fell silent as soon as Jack came into their sights. All eyes trained on Jack, flurries of emotions filled their corneas. Hate, envy, terror, none of them positive. Jack avoided eye-contact as best he could, he couldn't muster the courage.

As Jack walked further and further into the school the more eyes converged on him, and with every stare Gravity seemed to push Jack down further and further. As Jack finally approached him locker, with no sign of Steve or Brian anywhere, a hoof tapped on Jack's shoulder. “Hey kit, we're going to do a perimeter check for any suspicious activity. Take this radio and click in if you run into any trouble”

Officer Frankcastle bent down and handed jack a small portable radio, a Powerwerx Contact radio that was generally used for undercover or stake-out missions. It was small and totally black, dozens of buttons laced the front side of the radio but Jack knew how to use it well from the dozens of times he and Penny used to play cops and robbers as kits. As Frankcastle and Shriver left for the perimeter check Jack began to rummage through his locker, as he put stuff into place he noticed that it got darker. Jack exited the interior of his locker and turned around to see a tall figure standing behind him. Jack looked up expecting Brian but what he got was an even bigger surprise.

Standford Prowler. A face that Jack wasn't expecting and did not want to see. Standford towered over Jack, he was wearing a heavy pure-black hoody and ripped jeans and biker gloves. Jack had feared Standford in the past but now with his new get-up and face job, it'd scare the fur off any mammal. Standford's muzzle was covered in bandages, stitches visibly protruded from his face from underneath the bandages. Standford's eyes were always orange in coloration; granted they were still orange however his eyes this time were bloodshot, veins protruding from the whites of his eyes, filled with hate and malice.

Jack stood there staring in the hate-filled eyes of his long hated peer, however a grin began to form on Jack's muzzle. Jack crossed his arms and put on a variation of his dad's classic grin and half-lidded gaze, “Hey Standford, loving the new look your wearing really brings out the psycho in your eyes. But first I gotta know where did you get those jeans? They really bring out the color of your eyes, especially the veins that are bulging out of your... UURRGGGHH”.

Standford lunged at Jack, wrapping his larger paw around Jack's throat. Standford slammed Jack against the locker and began slowly raising Jack up the lockers until Jack's eyes met perfectly with Standford's. “You ruined me.... took away my dignity, my authority, and my pride..... I will make sure that every living moment of my life is spent until I rip out that flapping tongue of yours and shove down your throat. I'm running out of patience and your running out of time, so watch out Wilde.... If there's anyone on this Earth that's going to kill you it's going to be me”, Standford said in low voice.

As Standford's grip on Jack's throat tightened and low voice came from behind Standford, “Alright kid that's enough, you go any further than this and you'll be coming with us down to the ZPD holding cells”. Standford growled loudly at the voice originating from Officer Shriver who was standing right behind the larger teenager. Standford dropped Jack, who began gasping for air once he hit the hard tile floor. Standford turned to look down at Officer Shriver, who showed no sign of nervousness or concern at the size difference between him and Standford. Standford breathed heavily, his eyes widened and his paws clenched, clearly wanting nothing more than to kill the Pine Martin that stood in front of him. Standford conceded and began to walk away in a rage, however before doing so Standford swiveled around and glared at Jack, “This isn't over Wilde... count on it....”

As Standford stormed off and Shriver walked over to Jack, helping him up from his downed state. “You good kit? Looks like you really pinched a nerve there. Guess you two aren't exactly friendly with one another”

Jack regained his voice and gave Officer Shriver and raised eyebrow, “What gave you the hint, the death threats or the choking?”. Shriver gave a small chuckle to Jack's response, “Kinda figured, you want us to keep an eye out for this guy?”.

Jack pondered at Shriver's question; he knew that Standford would take any opportunity to jump him when he least expected it, but he also didn't want to feel superior to anyone in any way seeing that Jack would have his own personal bodyguards. “No thanks Officer Shriver, I think I can handle myself...”, Jack stated in an uncertain voice.

Clearly not buying Jack's response, “Alright kit, just be careful alright? Call us on radio if you need anything, Frankcastle will be escorting you to your first period class”. AS fate would have it the bell for first period rang, and Jack left with a heavy sigh.

***************************

As Jack came upon the door to his first period Biology class he saw Frankcastle standing by the door, arms crossed and impatiently tapping his hind hoof. “Took you long enough, you might want to go inside, the teacher's doing role call”, Frankcastle exclaimed. Jack rolled his eyes, “Yeah, can't wait, and FYI it's called attendance”. Frankscastle huffed at Jack's sarcasm. Unamused and too tired to care Jack waltzed into the classroom.

As Jack opened the door to his class all eyes once again careened over to him. “Good to see you were able to make it Mr. Wilde, I was beginning to think you were skipping my class altogether. Now please take your seat”, Jack looked up to see Mr. Deroldo, his Platypus Biology teacher. He was wearing his usual khaki pants and ridiculous pladd shirt, the same kind of outfit that Mr. Deroldo had been wearing for the past 25 years.

Jack meandered his way to his seat, lazily slumping into the smaller desk designed for foxes and thumped his backpack onto the tile floor. As Mr. Deroldo finished attendance and began the lesson Jack felt a large paw tap on his right shoulder. Jack turned to see Brian with a concerned look on his face, “I heard about what happened last night, you scared the bejeetles out of us man!”, Brian whispered as quietly as he could.

“Sorry about that, got kinda occupied by the family interrogation”, Jack said sarcastically.

“But what happened? Last time me and Steve saw you was over the monitor. Once you logged off we both freaked out”

Jack looked around him to see if anyone was listening to their conversation, despite a few dirty looks most were minding their own business. Jack relayed the whole encounter with the mask assailants; from the initial attack to the strange conversation that Jack overheard while he hid in the trash can, a decision that was amusing to Brian.

“Can't believe you actually hid in the trash can, Standford would've loved to see that”, Brian said tentatively.

Jack glared at Brian, but conceded and decided to leave the comment alone, “Well what are you going to do about it”, Brian asked.

Jack looked at Brian like he had six heads, “What do you mean 'what am I going to do about it?'”

“What I mean is, aren't you going to go after them? You know, the whole 'I shall have revenge on those who have wronged me!' kinda deal”, Brian said enthusiastically.

“A couple of things, 1. I'll let the police handle the whole shtick, my mom's the chief for fur's sake, and 2. I may be smarter than your average kit but I'm still only 17, plus I don't think my parents would enjoy the idea of me running around Zootopia busting down doors like some kind of rouge cop”, Jack mock kicked the empty desk next to him, causing a stir in the classroom.

“Is there something you wish to discuss Mr. Wilde?”, Mr. Deroldo asked in a groggy voice.

“Uuuuhhhh.... Nope, nothing at all sir, leg just fell asleep...”, Jack said with a wide grin.

“Well may I suggest that you and the desk take your quarrel outside after class is over”, Mr. Deroldo exclaimed in an annoyed voice, which drew a few snickers from the class.

“Yessir....”, Jack said with his ears flopped down, Jack swiveled to face Brian, “Ya see what you get me into?”

“Hey not my fault your bunny legs have a habit of kicking helpless desks. But anyway, you sure you're not up for a little spy work?”, Brian asked raising both his eyebrow's up and down.

“I don't think those guys were the type to leave a trail of bread-crumbs, besides, I'm not up for any kind of spy-work. I've already left on bad terms with my dad, plus after the hospital fiasco, I don't think my mom will ever let me be out of her peripheral vision again”, Jack said while twiddling his pencil.

“Don't bunnies have almost 360 degree peripheral vision?”, Brian asked unenthusiastically.

“Exactly the point....”

The loud click of the loud speaker came on, “Will all students report to the Auditorium during 2nd block for a mandatory event”

“Great more to look forward to....”, Jack said while rolling his eyes

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made two small edits to Jack's appearance, so if you wanna check that out you can look back to chapter one and read the description paragraph.


	10. Chapter 9: Bread Crumbs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD ANOTHER DELAY!!!!!!! Schooooooooolllll........

Jack and Brian snaked their way through the sea of students that converged to the auditorium, eventually they spotted Steve and rendezvoused with him outside the front entrance of the auditorium.

“Good to see that you're in high spirits eh Jack?”, Steve said in an overly sarcastic tone, “You've single-handedly become the most feared and hated kit in school”

“You're narcissism never ceases to amaze me Steve, but maybe every now and then you could be a bit more congenial when trying to comfort your friend...”, Jack growled behind gritted teeth.

“Now what's the fun in that?”, Steve said mischievously, “But anyway, good to see you're back on your hind paws”

“You never cease to amaze me on how fast you change your tone of voice as well Steveo...”, Brian said sarcastically, “Anyway we might wanna head in before the teachers find us slacking off”

“Oh yes how it would wound our beloved teachers that we would be late to this joyous occasion...”, Jack said flamboyantly flapping his paws around.

As the trio made their way into the auditorium Jack out of the corner of his eye spotted Cynthia. Jack immediate instinct was to rush over and try to apologize for what he did but thankfully the rational part of his brain was doing all of thinking and not his knot. His arm instinctively reached out to touch her despite the fact she was 10 yards away from him, however his arm recoiled at the sight of Standford lumbering over her like some kind of guardian troll. The strange thing was that his eyes were not not filled with the same malice that he showed towards Jack, in fact they seemed to be filled with regret. Jack remembered that Brian noticed Cynthia was bruised on her back, and if Jack ever found the time and/or courage to speak with her, he'd try his best to ask her.

Jack found his way and sat in-between Steve and Brian, sitting 4 rows from the front stage of the auditorium. As Jack began to prepare himself for the inevitable boredom that came with these kinds of events his phone buzzed against his thigh. As Jack pulled out his phone an unregistered number came up on the lock screen,

_Eyes up kit_

 

_Who is this?_

As soon as Jack responded the text deleted itself, confused at the whole ordeal Jack chose to ignore it. A couple of ideas ran thought his mind, maybe a crank texter or a wrong number. As the thought of the strange number bgan to encompass his thoughts, they were broken by sound of the principal's voice.

“Hello ladies and gentlemammals, today is a very special event, for we have the honor of having a very special guest speaker talk to all of you today. He graduated from this school as valedictorian of the class of 1993, please welcome Mr. Tiberius Thatcher”

Jack looked over to Steve who was jumping in his seat, “What are you so happy about?”, Steve asked begrudgingly.

“Dude, Thatcher's a god in the tech world, he's been the lead designer on so many huge projects! He designed the Ipear, military weapons, and so much more! He's my personal role model!”, Steve said giddily.

As Jack was about to tease Steve on his current fanboy-like nature however he froze at the sound of a low, gruff, and familiar voice. “Hello Students, it has been so long since the last time I came back to my old stomping grounds at Precint 1 High...”. Jack looked to the badger standing on stage. He was about two inches shorter than Jack, his eyes glowed a fiery topaz, he was wearing a full grey suit with a striped red tie. Jack tried to get a better look at him however his view was blocked by a wildebeast. Jack was able to position himself to get a better view, at the expense of Steve's leg, and look at the badger on stage. As the badger spoke from the podium he scanned around the room to get the attention of the students in the audience. As he scanned the badger looked at Jack directly in the eyes, although they held their gazes for a only a brief moment Jack immediately recognized the eyes that stared at him. They held the same amount of hatred and disgust from the night he was attacked.

Despite this Jack needed absolute assurance that this was indeed the masked wackadoodle that attacked him in the hospital. Jack began to clamber his way over Brian, “Dude what the hell are you doing?”. Jack looked up to Brian, who gave him a look of confusion.

“Doing... spy work....”, Jack said in an unsure voice, before Brian could respond Jack darted off silently down the corridors of the auditorium. The extremely faint sounds of his pawsteps drowned out by Thatcher's voice over the microphone. Jack scurried his way pas the teachers that were standing by the door to the auditorium.

Jack froze as soon as he exited the door, seeing both Officer Shriver and Frankcastle guarding on the other end of the hall. He could barely make out the conversation, something about deodorant and spray paint. He snuck his way to the teacher's lounge, for whenever the school would host some special guest they reserved the teacher's lounge for them as a “make-up” room. The was behind a num-pad lock, and thankfully due to multiple excursions with Steve he knew that all the lounges had the same passcode. “1356238”, Jack thought to himself.

Jack entered the number and the door clicked open. Jack looked around the door to see if any teacher's were present in the room. Jack snuck his way around, to find any information that might lead to his suspicion that the Badger giving his pepp talk was indeed on of the masked nut-jobs who attacked him in the hospital. He rummaged through drawers, cabinets, underneath seat cushions, yet he found nothing. As Jack was about to leave the lounge his right ear twitched at the sound of talking coming from down the hall.

Jack began to panic, if he was to be caught he knew that it would lead a major series of unfortunate events that would most likely end with him being beaten the crap out of by his mom. Jack frantically searched for a place to hide, and went with the bottom cabinet as his final choice.

Jack sprinted to the cabinet and closed it as quietly and quickly as he could, making sure to leave a near microscopic crack for him to hear what went on in the room. Jack hear the door click and open, and recognized the voice of Principal.

 

“I want to thank you once again for coming, it was a true honor having you here”

“There's no need for any praise, I merely wished it for the best that the children gain some form of wisdom. They spend too much time to themselves and on their phones for my liking”, Tiberius said.

“Well if you need anything please do call us up on the intercom”, The principal said cheerily.

“Of course”

Jack hear the sound of hooves clomping away and soon the sound of door closing shut followed.

“Egotistical prick..”, Jack heard Tiberius say in a huffed tone

Jack almost chuckled at the comment, he thought he was the only one that thought Principal Dingle was a prick. As he pondered at the thought he hear Tiberius rummage through what he believed was his pocket. Afterwards a minute of silenced passed, and was followed by a phone call.

“Hello?.... Yes sir everything is prepped and ready to go. The shipment should be arriving tomorrow night”

“....”

“Yes sir, however you will be happy to know that I can confirm the public institution in which the mantle attends is indeed this building”

“...”

"Yes sir I understand.... I will not fail you again”

As soon as Tiberius hung up the phone Jack hear paw steps, followed by the closing of a door. Jack peeked out from the inside of the cabinet. The coast was clear, Jack exited the cabinet and began to make his way out the door. As soon as he closed the door behind him he caught wind of Officer Shriver and Frankcastle making their way down the hall towards him. Jack panicked and ran for the nearest open door, which just so happened to be the janitor's closet.

Jack waited for both officers to walk by, and as soon as they did Jack phone vibrated. When Jack pulled his phone out of his pocket it showed that he had received an anonymous email with an attached image. He opened the email and looked at the sender. The email address and the server were starred out, and there was no subject line. All it read was,

“The hunt's on kit, time to start following the tracks...”

Jack looked at the attached image, it was the abandoned warehouse where Jack, Brian, and Steve launched their rocket, and beneath it read “2:35”. Jack pondered at the picture, Jack realized that Tiberius was talking about a shipment tomorrow night, and receiving this email must not have been a coincidence. Jack pulled down the email and texted Brian and Steve. “Time to get the gang together”.

 


End file.
